The Standard Training Model

This is a good place to start with serious competitive running.

Sunday, run as far as you can without walking or slowing much more than a minute per mile (2, under unusual circumstances). This will be 20-25% of your weekly mileage; if you manage to run more than 2.5 hours, call it 30% and plan to train for a marathon [the few people who manage more than 3.5 hours are ultramarathoners and the rules I state in this post won't apply; I'll try to address them later].

Wednesday is a run 2/3rds as long in miles as Sunday's, with the last 45-60 minutes run at a pace for a race of three times the duration (often marathon pace for faster runners).

The Saturday run is 20-40 minutes done at a pace for a race that takes 1-2 hours to finish [I'll explain how to predict race times in the next post... I hope]. This is about a 5K done at 15K pace for a lot of runners. The total distance of Wednesday and Saturday hard segments should be about 10% of the week's mileage. 

The Tuesday run is 3-5x3-6 minutes (800-1600m) at 5K race pace, with recovery jogs in-between repeats of half the time spent running hard. The total distance run hard should be 8% or less of the week's mileage.  

The Thursday run is 6-12x1-2 minutes (often 400m) at 1 mile race pace, with recovery jogs twice as long in time as the hard repeats. The hard parts should total 5% or less of the week's mileage. 

Monday is generally a few 100-150m repeats at 400m race pace, the number determined by setting the total of Tuesday, Thursday and Monday hard distances to 10% of the week's mileage. Sprinters will eventually do much more of this, but we'll assume for the moment you aren't one. If you're running only 5 days per week, this is one day to take off.

Friday's run is a few sprints of 30-40m, usually done up a steep hill, intending 100m race pace effort, though the hill precludes running that fast. If you're running 5 or 6 days per week, this is one to take off.

Your shorter runs should be under an hour. It may be necessary to run more than 7 times in a week to manage all the above requirements. 

Yes, it's a lot of math. I also have one more rule I use to vary the miles run, but it's extremely complicated and I have no real basis for it and something else will probably work for you. 

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You may note that the plan has running at paces from 100m to 100 mile race paces, as described in the last post. If you run this schedule for several weeks, you'd expect to improve equally at each one, but what you'll find is that you improve rapidly at one or two and there will be one or two where your body stubbornly refuses to improve. This is a good indication of what you're naturally good at and what distance you should be racing.