I read "Born to run" in 2010. I immediately understood I will run. In February 2011 bought Vibrams 5-finger and ran my first mile, and got calf pain lasting about a month. 

In 2012 I decided I should try running a marathon. Registered for local Baltimore marathon, and was training for it for half a year. During training ran up to 31 miles, but last months did mostly repeats and had a good rest last 2 weeks before marathon, - forced because of pain in the heel. This marathon was for me a very successful, - 3h39'33", Boston Qualified. And in a week after marathon I easily beat my personal records in all shorter distances.

But in 2013 I got a series of colds, tried running 3 50k ultras and 1 marathon. On marathon I've tried hard to improve my previous results. I did, improved by less than 2 minutes, but got knee pain and was not able to train for a month. Even started thinking about quitting running. But then discovered a gait with knee bent at the time of foot landing, which did not cause pain. 

Two months ago I read "The Cool Impossible" and started 5-moth training schedule from this book. Last week was week 4, and I think I should repeat it because on day 4, - ironically, it was day off, - got cold and did not train. I hope this schedule will help me get out of plateau and improve marathon times. And make my pace on ultras more close to marathon's pace. Last 50k took 7 hours 20 minutes. 

I have some concerns, - I ran 1 mile test in 6'40", and had average HR in 20' test equals 169. I read in "The Cool Impossible" my Speed Zone 1 (SPZ1) should match Hart Rate Zone 3 (HRZ3), and following SPZ2-5 should be similar to HRZ4-7. But my SPZ1, 9'30" - 9'00",  and I easily can keep this pace for couple hours being most of time in HRZ1, or in lower half of HRZ2. So sometimes what should be 'recovery runs' in HRZ2 for me are much harder than running in SPZ1. Ok, I will see how it goes and report here.

-- 

  Regards,

  Sergey Ivanov.