4x failproof ways to craft your runs/rides.

TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“Fail to plan, prepare to fail”

By Emma O’Toole

Hello and happy Sunday.

Last week I invited you to join Endurance Revolution 10 week free challenge, (great news, you can still get started now!) We looked at goal setting and the power of harnessing micro goals to achieve your longer term goal. Today’s newsletter focuses on structuring your training to help you achieve those goals.

I’ve had several great conversations with some of you lately about planning and organizing your training. One thing that was common in the conversations was ambiguity of what to do in each training session. You’ve dedicated the time to train, but what do you do in that time?

For some this led to running/riding with no real purpose; or, it was cherry picking the sessions that they enjoyed the most. For others, it was regularly granting yourself permission for an “easy” run/ride because it’s better than nothing.

This brings us back to the theme of these past few weeks: it isn’t about training more or harder, its about doing what you’re doing, only better.

To “do it better”, make sustainable progress and help you reach your goal, whatever that may be, you want to walk into every session with a plan.

The contents and specificity of the plan will reflect your goal, your current fitness level and your previous endurance and injury history amongst other things. That’s where a lot of generic plans fall short, they don’t know you so can’t possibly know how to get the most out of you, (however, they can be a great starting point to guide your training towards a goal!).

Here are 4 failproof ways to craft your training sessions:

1. Train with purpose

Laser focus your training and move a step closer to your goal by training with purpose. It will not only help your training in the week, but also is a great way to reflect on your week and see if there are any gaps in your program which are hindering your progression, for instance, no speed workouts in your training when training for a 5km PB.

2. Prioritize endurance over high intensity.

The exact split will be different for everyone and reflect your goals, availability to train (and recover) and your current fitness level. Nonetheless we want a large percentage of our training to be endurance building, eg. Zone 2. This is to build your aerobic base in order to layer speed and power on top of and to reduce your risk of injury from constantly working hard.

3. Try to avoid ‘back to back’ high-intensity workout days.

This for instance would be avoiding doing a Hill Climb session on Tuesday and a Threshold session on the Wednesday. You can still train on the Wednesday, but this would be an opportunity for an endurance boosting session. The idea behind this is to leave you feeling fresh and ready to hit the threshold session hard, without the fatigue from the day before.

4. Guide your training with real-time feedback. Whatever metric you’re using in your sessions, use it wisely to support your endurance performance. A session can subjectively feel really tough, but you might be 10 watts shy of being in your threshold zone. or 8 seconds shy. If you have no way of guiding your training in the moment or awareness of what your zones are, then you’re leaving a lot on the table with your performance. The outcome often is under-cooked high intensity sessions and over-cooked endurance sessions.

To help you with this, you can set your training device up to buzz at you if you’re in the incorrect zone (heart rate, power, pace). It helps you to switch off and focus on what you are doing. eg. running technique / pedalling efficiency and gently reminds you if you’re off target. This is a really useful tool to guide your training and give you real-time feedback

Watch this video to see how to set up a heart rate based session on a Garmin smartwatch.

Here’s an example of this loosely planned half marathon training schedule:

• Tuesday: 45 min run

• Wednesday: 1 hour ride

• Friday: 45 min run

• Sunday: 90 min run

To this example structured half marathon training plan:

• Tuesday: 45 min run - Threshold focus: 4× 4 minutes at zone 4 pace.

• Wednesday: 1 hour ride - Endurance focus: zone 2 heart rate/power output.

• Friday: 45 minute run (Endurance > Tempo focus: 2 mile half marathon target pace finish).

• Sunday: 90 min run (Race specific work: 3× 20 minute half marathon target pace blocks separated by endurance zone 2 pace work.

And the beauty of it, is that all of those pace/heart rate/effort level metrics to target and guide your sessions can be set up directly on your smartwatch.

This might seem a little time consuming right now, but I promise you that you’ll get a far better return on your time spent running/riding when you hit each session with a plan by doing what you’re already doing, aka running/riding, only better.

Put your feet up whilst you’re recovering from a run/ride and get planning!

If you’d like any help with your training plan or your training zones, please reply to this email and I’ll be in touch with some ideas how to help.

Don’t forget- Endurance revolution challenge is ON- A great place for you to put this into practice!

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