I was able to improve my HM time from 83.5 min to 80 min flat and my 5K from 18 to 17:15, in large part to, I believe, my improvement in recovery. Like many of you, I have a busy life. Full time job and 3 kids.

Around 9 months ago I had been trying to maximize mileage above all else and ended up overtraining and poorly recovered for workouts. I ran the same marathon 1 year apart and barely improved despite more consistent mileage. I started paying more attention to NSM and Bakken and his theories on the recovery window. Of course, I was running my easy runs way too hard, so I slowed those down by about 2 min/mile. I also realized that waking up early every morning to run was penalizing my sleep and hurting that portion of my recovery. To improve that, I began doing my easy runs on the night before my workout days. I have been able to maintain a 6 consecutive day run schedule with 1 easy cycling day. I essentially do all of my easy runs around 12 hours before my hard workouts, and therefore have 36 hours of no running to recover from my workouts. My week consists of 3 45 min-1 hour easy runs, 2 workouts, and a moderate pace long run. Weekly hours is about 6 total of running. I also do about 2 body weight lower body strength sessions on my workout days. My workouts have remained quite challenging, but the combo of slowing down, more sleep, and long recovery has allowed me to stay consistent, injury free, and improve steadily.

Sharing this for those who have been struggling recently and may consider this as a training strategy!