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TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“The time is now”

By Emma O’Toole

Hello,

I hope you’re having a great Sunday so far and welcome to the first weekend in December! There are some BIG races and events coming up and what may surprise you reading this is that they’re not too far away…

• Standard distance duathlon British Championships - 15 weeks away

• Brighton marathon- 17 weeks away

• Newport marathon- 18 weeks away

• London - Paris cycle ride- 19 weeks away

• Manchester marathon- 20 weeks away

• London marathon - 20 weeks away

Fitness typically takes 6-8 weeks to show up. This is a little known fact and often overlooked in many generic training plans.

Let’s take this example:

Rebecca is completing her 1st marathon at Manchester in 20 weeks time.

Rebecca has not started marathon training yet, but has been doing 3x 2 mile runs per week. A generic marathon training plan will likely have her long run progression look as follows:

This is a progression we so often see in beginner marathon training plans. However, following our 6-8 week window for fitness to show up, Rebecca is hitting Manchester marathon with not a huge amount of fitness gained from those 19 mile and 20 mile runs, just a lot of extra fatigue to a body that is not used to the demands of marathon. Added to this there are no deload (recovery weeks) built into that progression; it is just continual overload to the body.

I’m sure that Rebecca, in this example, would muddle through Manchester marathon, but I’d likely guess that she’ll struggle more than she needed to, I’d put my money on a niggle flaring up in her training window and Rebecca dropping any strength training that she had been doing around the week 8 mark. You can think of it like this: this training plan is asking Rebecca to run a distance personal best week after week and 2 weeks before the biggest distance she’s ever covered on two feet, she needs to run 20 miles.

This comes back to our bigger picture thinking - marathon training isn’t just a 20 week time capsule of your life; it’s a huge achievement, a bucket-list race distance for many runners. It’s concerns mindset: you are a long-distance runner.

I’d have advised Rebecca that she had spent more weeks prior to the 20 weeks out window building a base mileage to allow her to continue to build her endurance on top of. That way she’ll have safely enjoyed the race even further and helped reduce her likelihood of injuries/niggles presenting.

Say Rebecca had began base training in October, and 20 weeks out from Manchester marathon could comfortably run 10 miles, she could be hitting her peak mileage in weeks 12-14 of the 20 week plan. She could also think about adding different variables onto her training to help her performance, a tune-up race 4-6 weeks out and when she had her last long run 3-4 weeks out from Manchester marathon, her body would be used to covering that distance.

For those of us seeking a performance or time-orientated goal in an event/race, this becomes even more apparent. If this is not your first rodeo at a race/event, and this time you’re searching for a performance orientated goal, eg. finish in X time or cover Y distance, we need to review where we are right now and what is manageable in the time-frame we have available. Doing too much all at once and changing many variables opens us up to an increased risk of injury, poor motivation, overtraining and generally feeling pretty rubbish.

Why does all this matter?

Because the time is now.

I see so many runners and cyclists put off starting their training plan, thinking they have months on end, (which is true, they do), however when we break that training plan down and see it in black and white, we often see that there is not an abundance of time before a key race/event.

6 steps to plan your training:

If you’ve got an upcoming race/event next year and are starting to think about your training plan, I recommend you take a reverse engineering approach and follow these 6 steps:

1. Put your race/event into the calendar and count back the weeks until you reach today’s date.

2. Look at your weekly schedule and plan in your training working backwards from race/event day making sure you have at least one rest day a week and de-load weeks as necessary.

3. Identify your key sessions of the week, (tempo session, steady Z2 session, strength training).

4. Schedule sensibly and avoid planning your key sessions on back to back days. For example avoid this structure: Tuesday -Tempo, Wednesday - Threshold, Thursday - Long run/ride and Strength training.

5. Plan for anticipated missed training, eg. holidays, weddings, birthdays etc. Bookend these events/periods with modified training to avoid falling into the dangerous catch-up trap.

6. Finally, be honest with yourself about your current fitness level and how viable your goal is with the plan you now have.

Of course, you could grab an off the shelf training plan, (they’re certainly popular!). However these training plans often confuse runners/cyclists: “what happens when I miss a session, or two?”, “I’m away for the Easter holiday weekend and miss my longest run/ride, what do I do?”, “My back hurts after 2 hours of running/riding, do I stop or push through?”, “Where does my strength training fit in now I am training more each week?”.

Those plans don’t know you, your injury history, the stresses in your week, your availability to train and what your target is with your race/event. Plus most of these plans include zero strength training to help support your running and cycling goals. There is also no accountability and no one to help you through. The quantifiable outcome of these races/events is often the same regardless if you’re on the top step of the podium or last to cross the line: you’ve still covered the same distance and your training plan should reflect this fantastic achievement. This is why 1-1 coaching works because your training is periodized and centered around your goal event(s)/race(s), However, if you’re not quite ready for that, I do have individualized training plans for running, cycling and triathlon.

If you’re just looking for advice and a fresh pair of eyes on your training plan, or unsure where to start with it, please reply to this email and I’ll be in touch with some suggestions to help out.

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