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.
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I’m so glad to see you looking at recovery. I think it’s the hardest thing for runners to wrap their heads around and it’s so important!
Good luck with your training plan! It looks like you have thought this through very carefully and I am sure you will be successful!
great looking plan! good luck with the sleeping. i totally struggle to sleep enough and while i joke that my running is really good on lack of sleep i always wonder what i could do if i was truly rested
It’s great to have a plan you can be excited about. Just remember, it’s a set of guidelines, not a strict schedule. It will be important (as always) to take time at several occasions to monitor your development and how you’re holding up to the various workout stresses. Even day by day you might want to change things up to suit the way your body is feeling. If you’re not ready to hit a workout well, you don’t want to suffer through a sub-par effort. After all, that isn’t likely to help you anyway.
Thanks Adam, definitely a good point and one I’m respecting. Just today on my run, really bad conditions, was wondering how I was going to hit all those workouts if it’s like this out – I imagine there’ll be some rearranging here and there. My only problem is not being well-attuned to when I feel ready for a hard workout, I pretty much feel the same all the time, which isn’t helpful. I’m counting on the cutbacks and days off to ensure that even when I can’t tell, I’m getting the recovery I need.
The empty days – easy running or rest? I’m with you on the diffuclty of predicting a workout. I sometimes head out feeling like crap, then warm up and hit my paces nicely.
Oh D’oh! Never mind. I was not reading it right
Sleep-one of those often overlooked yet very important factors when it comes to training and racing well. Thanks for the reminder on that!
Looks great! (says the girl who changes workouts on the fly all the time, I admire your commitment in laying it out there) And the nice thing about training in the summer is that it’s a lot easier not to go stir crazy if you do take a day off from running… go for a nice walk, swim a bit…
I really like all the different aspect of that training plan. You are sure not to get bored or overwhelmed with it. More importantly, I am so EXCITED for the race you are training for! I know what you mean about getting to bed early. I’ve been in this stay up late, get up early, take a nap cycle all summer! AWFUL!
Seems like a good training plan! LindsZ told me about the 5k – very strange!… Is that really the name of the half now? It seems uber long and ridiculous
No cutie, it’s not the real name, that’s Dogpound’s invention. It’s the “ING Rock ‘n Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon”. We’re bitter about the name change.
oh haha. I’m so gullible :P
I wanted to see the Rocknrollendlessname wrapping around a T-shirt.
I like the Italian style of training Flo. You should do well off this plan. On hitting workouts in bad conditions, I like the advice of Pete Magill (in an 5k training article Joe Garland linked to) about running at “effort” as opposed to “pace”. For example, 6 x 1000 @ 5k effort rather than @ 5k pace. That way you can run the workout on the set day without worrying about the conditions. 5k effort when it’s 90F and blowing a gale might be 7 minute miles rather than 6:40s.
The other thing that caught my eye was the 67 miles in the second-last week. Equal highest weekly miles of the whole plan. A one week taper? That’s not much of a freshening up for the legs. Why not cut right back on the length of the easy days that week? Just my thoughts.
Thank you for the “effort” reminder, it’s been freaking me out a bit of how I’m going to hit the proper paces when it’s 83 degrees at 6:30am. Not that I’ll have a choice but to go slower but at least now I’ll remember not to feel bad about it.
About that last week, I do a 2-week taper for a marathon, and with 2 days off on raceweek, it should be fine. We’ll see when it gets to that time, I’m happy to adjust as necessary.