Lets talk about over training...

So, I've been talking to Aaron about this for a while but I am having some concerns and since we're all friends I think this is something we should maybe all talk about openly. Obviously we can all follow whatever plan we want but I really love us all doing the same runs right now because I love to hear how everyone's runs went that day. However, I am worried that the current plan involves what I would call "over" training. From everything I've read about running the weekday runs are more at pace but shorter and then your weekend would have your "long slow run" where you don't worry about pace but try to get your miles in. I am concerned that in the future the plan shows some 7 milers on week days. In the plan I did before I usually did 3-4 milers during the week, I don't think I ever did more than 5 miles on a week day. Even most full marathon plans consist of mostly 4 milers. I think I CAN do a 7 miler during the week (eventually) but I don't know that it would be conducive to avoiding injury. But what I'm most concerned about are the way the Saturday runs increase. Again, from what I've read you should really not be increasing long runs by more than about 10% a week. Now I think that doesn't ALWAYS apply, when you are running shorter distances but to go from 60 min to 90 min is a 50% increase (yes, sadly I had to ask Aaron to do that math for me). That really worries me. I never increased my long runs by much more than a mile a week before.

SO, since some of you out there have the "book" I would love to hear if it has anything to say about over training, injury and how fast you should really be increasing the length of your long run. I don't think I was running 90 minutes last time until the month or so before the race. I think I CAN but again, I worry about injury if my body isn't ready to go there. I think I'm going to go back to the Hal Higdon website and start trying to figure out a new plan to start in March. I followed the intermediate 1/2 plan last time but I don't want to do speedwork this time, I don't have time, so I think I might try to follow it but replace the speedwork days. I also liked increasing the one mile every weekend. One mile never seemed like THAT much more, plus since I did an out and back I only really had to go a half mile farther out than the last week, which never seemed like very much and helped me to know I could do just that little bit more. However, I would love input and I don't want to feel like I under-trained but I do want to avoid injury and there is something safe about doing the same plan I did before since I know I did that and was able to finish the race. So, let's talk about this a little...
(sorry this ended up really long!!)