Drue Coles of Bloomsburg, PA set a new PR last month at the Wineglass Half Marathon in upstate NY. His official time was 1:29:45, just over one-minute faster than his previous best from 2014 and just under his ultimate goal of sub-1:30. [Full Results]
At age 53, it’s great to see Drue still getting faster. After the race he commented, “The plan worked perfectly….I’m glad I found The Run SMART Project (and before that, Daniels’ Running Formula). I thought perhaps I had peaked in 2014 since my 2015 racing times were generally a little slower, but I guess I just needed the right workouts in the right order!”
We’ve had a lot of success with masters runners over the years. The key is making sure they’re training at an appropriate training volume and always at the right intensities. When training on VDOT O2 the workouts should always be hard, but doable and that’s the sweet spot Drue found while following his plan…
“The most interesting thing about the plan was that I would look at workouts coming up in a couple of weeks and raise an eyebrow, feeling like they were just a little too ambitious; but by the time those two weeks passed, some gains had apparently been made and the workouts were doable (barely, it often seemed).”