Developing Your Own Training Plan

Essential Ingredients IX

Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 12:00 am

The start of the new year is an opportunity and a challenge. Whether your running attains new heights in 2007 is largely up to your willingness to plan to improve your performance. Effective planning begins by being aware of your strengths and weaknesses, determining what you want to achieve, and understanding the process involved in making your goals a reality. You need clear goals, a racing plan, a training plan, and a supplementary training and recovery plan. World-class coaches and athletes go through these steps at this time of year, as should anyone who wants to optimize performance.

What do you want to accomplish in 2007?


Your first step is to establish goals for the coming year. Sport psychologists recommend stating goals in terms of performance (such as "to run at least five days a week during January and February") rather than outcome (such as "to win my age group"). The advantage of performance goals is that most of the necessary factors to achieve your goal are within your control, whereas with outcome goals, major aspects of reaching your goal (e.g., the efforts of other runners) are not, which can lead to anxiety and frustration.

To be truly motivating, your goals should be specific and measurable, have a time limit, and be challenging yet achievable. Such goals focus your efforts much better than vague goals such as "to become a better runner." To provide motivation, there can be no question afterwards as to whether you reached your goal. Examples of specific and measurable goals are "to run under 40 minutes for 10K by the end of the summer," or "to run a minimum of 30 miles per week for each of the next six weeks."

Challenging yet achievable goals are great motivators. Easy or outlandish goals, on the other hand, will not provide the motivation to roll out of bed on a rainy morning. Set goals that you have a realistic chance of achieving within a time frame that provides motivation for your training.

Developing your racing plan:

A well thought out racing plan is critical for reaching your goals. In selecting your target races for 2007, ensure that the courses and environmental conditions are suitable for achieving your goals (e.g., do not try to set a PR in a July 4 race), and that you have enough training time to realistically reach your goals.

After identifying your target races, you select tune-up races, which are benchmarks of your preparation and help develop race toughness. Racing at distances that are shorter than your goal race prepares you to run at, or slightly faster than, your target race pace for a sustained period. For example, two 5K races and an 8K race are excellent preparation for a 10K.

A common mistake in developing racing plans is to race too often. Each tune-up race should have a role in your preparation for a target race. Racing every two or three weeks over nine to 10 weeks is frequent enough to develop mental toughness, but infrequent enough so you do not get overtired or blasé about racing.

Developing your training plan:

With your goals and racing plan established, you can develop your training plan. To maintain your focus during the year, divide your training into training blocks of four to six weeks, in which the last week of each block is a recovery week. Recovery weeks are vital to your progress because they allow your body to adapt to the key workouts you put in during your hard training weeks. A rule of thumb for recovery weeks is to run 60 to 70 percent of your previous week’s mileage, without any hard sessions.

The next step is to decide what your training priorities will be during each training block. For each block, you will have a main training objective, a secondary objective, and a third, minor objective. Training objectives typically fall in the following four categories: endurance (developed by long runs); lactate threshold (developed by tempo runs); VO2 max (developed by long intervals); and speed (developed by short intervals). Doing three workouts for your primary objective, two for your secondary objective and one for your minor objective every two weeks is usually effective.

Which types of training you should emphasize in each block depends on the distance of the race, how many weeks away it is, and your own strengths and weaknesses as a runner. For example, with 15 weeks to go until a marathon, your primary objective would likely be to emphasize endurance, whereas with four weeks to go before a 10K you would likely emphasize VO2 max training. To complete your week-by-week training schedule, simply select three days per week for your hard workouts, allowing at least one rest day between efforts, then fill in the other days with general aerobic conditioning runs, recovery runs and rest days.

The last step is to add the non-running activities that will help you reach your running goals. These consist of aerobic cross training such as cycling and swimming, supplemental training sessions such as core strength training and flexibility sessions, and lifestyle factors to improve your recovery such as massage, staying well-hydrated, and maintaining a more regular sleep pattern. For many runners, it is these "extra" considerations that determine whether they reach their racing goals.

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