Friendly Advice

I am stocking up on advice for this big Whitsunday Run. Because when I naively signed up for it months ago, I thought "28.7k trail run. That's not bad...Just a bit longer than my half marathon runs. I can do this."
And then a friend told me to expect to run it in 4 hours. After all, it is essentially a marathon in its own rights. Yikes! So I've been soaking up knowledge from my running pals as the clock ticks down. But as with any advice, different runners have different opinions.
Advice #1: "maximize the long slow runs on Saturday. You don't need to run those fast, but you need to worry about spending the time on your feet. That will help you get through the race."
Advice #2: "the most important session of the week is the hills session. Running trails is essentially running hills non-stop. If you're only going to attend one session a week, it's all about the hills on Thursday."
Advice #3: "to get more power in your legs & more speed under you for the race, you need to smash the sprint sessions on Tuesday as if there is no tomorrow. You should be so exhausted afterwards your muscles are vibrating."

Okay, so that means I have three "most important" sessions a week. Bring it!

Tuesday - sprints. (Before the friendly advice). But - although my legs didn't vibrate after the session - I still worked my butt off. Sprint sessions have become now 70min (rather than 60min), making the sprint part itself 45min (rather than 35min). What a difference that makes! We did two sets of 1/2/3/4/5min reps with a 1min recovery in between, and finishing off with a final 5min rep. We ran it in a 500m loop. I didn't try to record the details, but the summary says it all.

Time: 1.02.16min
Distance: 9.80km!
Average pace: 6.07min/km

Wednesday - pace run? Tempo run? I'm not sure what to call this. I think I'll call it "hard core Wednesday morning run for people training for a marathon" run. Which is what it is. Four of us met at 5am - 5AM!!! - and took off together for a quick-paced jog into the city. I ended up running 12k. I was meant to do 16k, but unfortunately 16k would be more realistic for a person not having to rush home, eat breakfast, shower, and leave the house for work at 7am. Sure, I could do an extra 4k at 4.30am on my own before meeting the others, but even I have my limits.

Time: 1.09.56min
Distance: 11.64km
Average pace: 5.55min/km

Keep in mind my 10k race pace from last weekend was 5.54min/km, so - for me - it certainly was a fast moving run!