Archive for June 23rd, 2010

That was weird.  I get to the park this morning and find myself in the tail end of a 5K.  Who schedules a 5K at 7am Wednesday morning?  Stinkin’ hot, too.  But on to the good stuff…

My Training Plan
It’s here, it’s here!!  My Half plan for the philadelphiadistancerockandrunhalfmararoll, formerly known as the Philadelphia Distance Run on Sept. 19th.

During my week off, I  Half-fashioned a Half training plan under the guidance of mentor (coach?) Adam/A Muse who patiently refined and shaped it into a really swell, kick-ass plan.  I can’t thank him enough for working on it and hope to do him proud come September.  Thank you, Adam!

The plan is based on an article about periodization (for marathons actually, but applicable to the Half, as well) where Base is followed by a Speed phase, then a Strength phase.

Now, I haven’t followed a periodized plan since I did Pfitzinger’s 18/55 two years ago.  Since then, I’ve used either Hudson’s canned plans, which don’t have real defined phases, or I rolled my own without any thought about that stuff.  I mean, I always knew I should be thinking in those terms, but wasn’t really understanding how to go about it till now.

Base: a no-brainer.  This one is abbreviated because I have a strong base already, just need to build back easily after the heat drama, so nothing hard this week except for a progression run.  The following two weeks include rudimentary quality to get me prepped for the Speed phase.

Speed: this phase features 5K pace interval sessions and tempos mostly at 10k pace.  There are also a couple miler workouts from this great article Adam sent my way.  The tempo intervals on Aug. 6th will be my first taste of Half pace and establishes a baseline.

Strength: this portion focuses on 10k strength workouts. As Salazar says about Half training, “…it’s 75 percent the same as 10K training.”  Also, in addition to the 10k fun, starting in the Speed phase and ramping up through Strength are a good number of race pace runs, very important.

Long Runs: most of these will be on my local trail which gives me a hillier route than usual.

Recovery: this may be listed here after all the fun stuff, but it was the first thing I penciled in.  Recovery (or lack of) has been on my mind a lot these days; my cavalier attitude about it, how I rarely took cutback weeks and when I did, the mileage cut was meager.  No more.

This plan has two major cutback weeks on each end of the Speed phase with a 30% reduction in mileage.  That means taking two days off in each of those weeks.  Seems excessive, but my instinct tells me it’s the right thing to do.

To bolster my point: my friend Jeff is an accomplished, hardcore cyclist, podiums all the time.  A few weeks ago at a bike race, he and the entire 40-45 AG were beat out by a 63-year old, and by a sizable margin!  He spoke to Jeff after the race and told him his success is all about recovery, especially before races.  And he never puts in miles “just to put in miles”, everything has a purpose.  This is nothing I haven’t heard before but this time…I’m listening.

Enough jabber, here’s the plan, full size.
Joking. Click for hugeness.

Two more items worth mentioning, nutrition and sleep:

Nutrition: I already eat cleanly, so no problems with this.  The cookie gorging finished a few weeks ago, then dessert became cereal before morphing this week into fruit salad, which is really weird because I’ve never been a big fruit eater – suddenly I love it.  Yay me.

Sleep: I’ve been as stupid about this as recovery.   I have to stop going to sleep after midnight  if I’m going to get out early to run.  I end up tired all summer.  Will amend this starting tonight.  11pm or bust.