I’m sure many of you don’t reason in metric, but in imperial units. So what should you do? Convert all the workouts to miles, and increment 0.62 miles per week?

This is actually what many programs do, even the famous ones like Hal Higdon’s. They may be built with miles in mind, and then simply convert to metric. It doesn’t work, because I don’t want to run 4.6 km.

Clear, rounded numbers are helpful to keep track of your running and adapt it to your needs. So my suggestion for non-metric people is this:

• use multiples of 1-2-3 miles. So the first week of the first cycle will be 1, 2 and 3 miles. A bit harder than the metric first week, but not enormously so – since you should have built your foundation before starting. Keep it particularly slow if needed.
• Repeat every week once. This will make each imperial cycle equivalent to two metric cycles.
• You should also add a cutback week in the middle. Make it two if you also want to race during the cycle (I’ll talk about tapering for races in a future post).

And this is it. You can then add more cycles or move to a specialised program, as you wish.