Monday AM 4 miles with Uta, 30:57
PM road 5, 33:52, this was all I had time for before seeing Anna for some circuits and massage
Tuesday AM 4 miles with Uta, 30:37
PM 3 warm up, drills and strides, Mona Fartlek, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2015/01/monaghetti-fartlek.html, on my normal loop. Covered 3.76 miles which isn't good but isn't awful 2.6 cool down, forgot that I needed to do a loop of side neighborhood to make the cool down 3 and wasn't going to add on once I got home.
Wednesday PM 15.3 miles in 1:47. I have class after school on Wendnesdays so this run goes pretty late. Nothing like finishing a run around 9pm knowing you'll be up before 5am for the next one...
Thursday AM 4 miles with Uta in 29:50
PM 3 mile warm up, drills, strides, 15x200 avg. 31.0 with 200 jogs, in around 65 for recovery. 3 mile cool down. I have rarely felt as shitty for a workout. Not very fun. I also had a flat tire waiting for me at my car so that added to my enjoyment of this session.
Friday AM 4 with Uta, 30:08, crazy tired.
PM 10.6 at Phillips, first 6 with Melissa and Uta, took it very easy, 1:23.
Saturday AM road 8.1 with Uta, 55mins
PM 8 miles, first 5 with Melissa, 59:06.
Sunday AM 3 plus warm up, drills, strides, 30 second hard effort. Race Lone Gull 10k, USATF-NE championship, very strong field including at least 5 guys other than myself who have sub 65 half marathon pb's. It was also hot, around 80. finished 11th in 31:13, very nice step in the right direction. Pack went out slow so I hung onto the back of the lead group of around 25 in 4:56, stayed on the back of the pack as it steadily got smaller and ran 5:01 for the second mile, the third mile was much the same but I was a bit worried because I was starting to feel ragged at the end of it but we had actually picked it up and I ran a 4:48 so that got me pretty pumped up. I fell off the pack as they drove on and I ran a 5:08. I passed two more guys though. I tried to go after three more guys who had come off the lead pack and managed a 5:00 but I wasn't able to run them down. I ran another 5:08 for the 6th mile which finishes at the crest of a decent sized hill and I was finished. The last quarter was a struggle!
8 mile cool down with Ruben after.
Summary 103 miles for the week, two moderate workouts, one decent race. For those not reading between the lines. I had been a bit anemic at the end of summer. I don't take feosol any more because my stomach can't handle it. I take a food based supplement Melissa found that works and doesn't bother my stomach called ferrofood by standard process. I starting taking the iron and it helped right away but I thought I had two bottles. Well at the start of last week I ran out of bottle one only to realize I was mistaken. Standard process sends out all orders on Monday so basically we ordered it but it didn't come in until Friday of this week. In the intervening time I have been getting a bit more run down each day. My resting hr was up about 10 bpm and my heart rate on runs has been through the roof. I took as much of the ferrofood as I dared on Saturday and just hoped that it would help a bit. I was honestly afraid after how I ran on Friday and Saturday and I was going to struggle to run 33 at Lone Gull. The heat in the morning did nothing to assuage those fears. However the difference in how easy the first mile in 4:56 felt compared with the much more downhill 4:51 last weekend told me right off the iron had kicked in at least a little. I was very surprised I didn't blow up in the second half but obviously in a good way.
Hope you are running well. Oh and for those who want to order some rabbit gear 10% off link below.
http://rabbit.refr.cc/nathanielj
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Training blog September 11 to 17, 2017
Monday AM 4 miles with Uta in 31:31
PM road 10, 1:06:32
Tuesday AM road 5 with Melissa and Uta, 40:53
PM 3+ warm up, drills and a tempo 400 in 78, 30x100m on track in around 16.0 with 100 jog recoveries, then 3 plus cool down.
Wednesday didn't run in the AM because I needed some sleep.
7PM easy medium long run of 14.5 in 1:38:34. I have a class immediately after schools on Wednesdays this fall for 2 and 1/2 hours. It is going to suck.
Thursday AM 4 miles with Uta in 30:39
PM 3+ warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 30.7. Felt good on the strides but it was hot and it had been very hot all day in my classroom so I was tired overall. I did a very easy tempo on the track covering 5k in 16:29. I was going to do 10k but I lost coordination. It was that kind of a day, 3+ cool down
Friday planned day off. I wanted the good night sleep and I left from school to drive to northport and pretty much went straight to be after arriving around 9pm
Saturday AM 3 plus warm up, drills, strides 30 second hard effort. Race Cow Harbor 10k, 18th place 32:03, split 16:01 at 5k. I actually ran pretty perfectly. I'm just not fit. I'm incredibly frustrated to be running 32's but there isn't much to do but keep plugging away and trying to rebuild. This was a nice step forward from the last 10k as it was a few seconds faster and on a much tougher course and I found the conditions tougher as the humidity, 97%, was very rough. 3 mile cool down
Sunday AM drive home
PM easy long run, did first two miles at a shuffle pace with Melissa who was being careful to recover after running a half marathon yesterday and Uta who hates the heat, It was 85 and humid. just about 20 and a half miles in 2:24:39
Summary 92 miles, 1 race, two medium effort workouts. Hot week and with the AC not working at school I was pretty dehydrated all week. Just can't keep up with the amount of sweating I do in a shirt and tie when it is solidly in the mid to high 80's in my classroom all day. Also still struggling to get back in the swing of getting up before 5 in the morning for the morning runs.
I race the smart sit back and work my way through the field race I wanted to but I was about 10 seconds per mile slower than I wanted. Still the base has just ended so now I have a starting point. It isn't the one I wanted but I'll work from it.
Hope you are well.
PM road 10, 1:06:32
Tuesday AM road 5 with Melissa and Uta, 40:53
PM 3+ warm up, drills and a tempo 400 in 78, 30x100m on track in around 16.0 with 100 jog recoveries, then 3 plus cool down.
Wednesday didn't run in the AM because I needed some sleep.
7PM easy medium long run of 14.5 in 1:38:34. I have a class immediately after schools on Wednesdays this fall for 2 and 1/2 hours. It is going to suck.
Thursday AM 4 miles with Uta in 30:39
PM 3+ warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 30.7. Felt good on the strides but it was hot and it had been very hot all day in my classroom so I was tired overall. I did a very easy tempo on the track covering 5k in 16:29. I was going to do 10k but I lost coordination. It was that kind of a day, 3+ cool down
Friday planned day off. I wanted the good night sleep and I left from school to drive to northport and pretty much went straight to be after arriving around 9pm
Saturday AM 3 plus warm up, drills, strides 30 second hard effort. Race Cow Harbor 10k, 18th place 32:03, split 16:01 at 5k. I actually ran pretty perfectly. I'm just not fit. I'm incredibly frustrated to be running 32's but there isn't much to do but keep plugging away and trying to rebuild. This was a nice step forward from the last 10k as it was a few seconds faster and on a much tougher course and I found the conditions tougher as the humidity, 97%, was very rough. 3 mile cool down
Sunday AM drive home
PM easy long run, did first two miles at a shuffle pace with Melissa who was being careful to recover after running a half marathon yesterday and Uta who hates the heat, It was 85 and humid. just about 20 and a half miles in 2:24:39
Summary 92 miles, 1 race, two medium effort workouts. Hot week and with the AC not working at school I was pretty dehydrated all week. Just can't keep up with the amount of sweating I do in a shirt and tie when it is solidly in the mid to high 80's in my classroom all day. Also still struggling to get back in the swing of getting up before 5 in the morning for the morning runs.
I race the smart sit back and work my way through the field race I wanted to but I was about 10 seconds per mile slower than I wanted. Still the base has just ended so now I have a starting point. It isn't the one I wanted but I'll work from it.
Hope you are well.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Training Blog September 4 to 10, 2017
Monday AM 2.1 mile warm up then some strides and drills. 14 mile fundamental tempo run around the Phillips fields 1:19:36, 5:41 mile pace. Legs were wiped out the last couple of miles even though breathing was still comfortable. It was humid but not really that bad. Basically I think I just need some long runs. I have done very few long runs over the last few years because of the coordination issues but I'll just have to make them work one way or another.
PM 5 miles in 35:02
Tuesday AM road 4 miles with Melissa and Uta, 33:42
PM road 10, 1:05:28
Wednesday PM road 10k with Uta in 43:13, then half mile jogging with strides mixed then 6x quarter mile hill repeats with jog down recovery. 1:31, 1:34, 1:34, 1:35, 1:34, 1:33. mile cool down
Thursday AM road 4 miles with Uta in 31:05
PM road 10, 1:05:37
Friday AM road 4 miles with Melissa and Uta, 32:19
PM road 10, 1:05:26
Saturday AM 5k warm up on GBTC XC course with DJ Raboin, 23:22, drills, strides, 30 second hard effort, more strides. Race GBTC XC festival 5k, 1st place, 15:40. took the lead between 400 and 600 meters in and ran alone pretty much from that point on. A couple years ago I ran 15:39 here but in a very competitive losing effort so this probably shows better fitness. Not a great effort for the race but about what can be expected based on how little racing I have done and running from the front. 5k on the course for a cool down with DJ, 23:22.
PM 8.2 miles on road solo, 57:55
Sunday AM road 20.6, 2:31:22, first 10 miles in 81mins with Melissa and Uta, pleasantly surprised that with the slow start the coordination held the whole way.
PM road 10k, 42:45
Summary ~119 miles, two middle of the road workouts and a middle of the road race. All in all a solid week. I have cow harbor this weekend and I really would love to get back in the top 10. The last time I ran there I was 12th in 31:12 and I tuned up for that with a 15:39 in the same race I ran this week but as I mentioned with much more competition so I'm very hopeful that I'm coming around and I can produce a sub 31 at Cow Harbor which is usually enough to slip into the top 10. The race effort this week left something to be desired but I have a feeling having some competition will take care of that. I would love to have a few more weeks and a few more races to tune up for Cow Harbor but at least I'm in a place where if I run well I won't embarrass myself too badly.
Hope your week went well.
PM 5 miles in 35:02
Tuesday AM road 4 miles with Melissa and Uta, 33:42
PM road 10, 1:05:28
Wednesday PM road 10k with Uta in 43:13, then half mile jogging with strides mixed then 6x quarter mile hill repeats with jog down recovery. 1:31, 1:34, 1:34, 1:35, 1:34, 1:33. mile cool down
Thursday AM road 4 miles with Uta in 31:05
PM road 10, 1:05:37
Friday AM road 4 miles with Melissa and Uta, 32:19
PM road 10, 1:05:26
Saturday AM 5k warm up on GBTC XC course with DJ Raboin, 23:22, drills, strides, 30 second hard effort, more strides. Race GBTC XC festival 5k, 1st place, 15:40. took the lead between 400 and 600 meters in and ran alone pretty much from that point on. A couple years ago I ran 15:39 here but in a very competitive losing effort so this probably shows better fitness. Not a great effort for the race but about what can be expected based on how little racing I have done and running from the front. 5k on the course for a cool down with DJ, 23:22.
PM 8.2 miles on road solo, 57:55
Sunday AM road 20.6, 2:31:22, first 10 miles in 81mins with Melissa and Uta, pleasantly surprised that with the slow start the coordination held the whole way.
PM road 10k, 42:45
Summary ~119 miles, two middle of the road workouts and a middle of the road race. All in all a solid week. I have cow harbor this weekend and I really would love to get back in the top 10. The last time I ran there I was 12th in 31:12 and I tuned up for that with a 15:39 in the same race I ran this week but as I mentioned with much more competition so I'm very hopeful that I'm coming around and I can produce a sub 31 at Cow Harbor which is usually enough to slip into the top 10. The race effort this week left something to be desired but I have a feeling having some competition will take care of that. I would love to have a few more weeks and a few more races to tune up for Cow Harbor but at least I'm in a place where if I run well I won't embarrass myself too badly.
Hope your week went well.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Weekly Training Blog August 28 to September 3, 2017
Monday AM road 5 with Uta, 37:22, back to work this week so this was at 5am.
PM road 10, 1:08:43
Tuesday PM it was the first day with the kids and we had an Open house so I tried to sneak in a workout after school before that. It was a screw up from jump street. First I should have known I would be hurting after the first day with the kids, then I didn't drink any water all day as I was running around and that got missed. Anyway 3 mile warm up, drills, strides and a 200 in 32.8 which didn't feel good, then attempted Aussie quarters, aiming for 45 recoveries and 68 efforts ran two 43/68.0/46/68.8 and I was already hurting and called it rather than put myself in a hole. Ran back to school and went out to dinner with the other teachers... Not my proudest day
Wednesday PM road 10, 1:07:25, felt perhaps even shittier than yesterday. Felt like I wanted to stop and take a nap from the gun
Thursday AM road 4 with Uta, 29:10
PM road 10, 1:04:06
Friday -No school- AM at Phillips, 3+ warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 31 and a 600 jog. felt good, a couple of the strides were in the 14.1 range, now there was a strong tailwind but my fastest 100 ever is a 13.9 or so and that was during an actual hurricane so you can imagine that tailwind. 5x2k running each rep as alternations running the just under 70 and then about 80 for the laps. 4mins recovery with a 400 meter jog. 6:08, 6:07, 6:08, 6:08, 6:07 for the 2ks. Very windy. Honestly I'm happy with the workout as run but given the wind it was actually much better than it looks. 3.5 cool down.
late AM Anna for massage
PM 3.5 miles with Uta and Melissa, her first run back as she recovers from Lyme.
Saturday AM road 8.2, 54:21, not as sore as I expected after yesterday.
PM road 8.1 with Uta, 54:41
Sunday AM road 6, 40:35
PM road 10, 1:03:12
Summary around 97 miles for the week. only one decent workout but the first week of school is always a shit show so I'll take it. I have another short week next week with only 4 days and then it will be full weeks for a while. Starting to race back into shape this coming week with the GBTC xc meet. Then Cow harbor the following week.
PM road 10, 1:08:43
Tuesday PM it was the first day with the kids and we had an Open house so I tried to sneak in a workout after school before that. It was a screw up from jump street. First I should have known I would be hurting after the first day with the kids, then I didn't drink any water all day as I was running around and that got missed. Anyway 3 mile warm up, drills, strides and a 200 in 32.8 which didn't feel good, then attempted Aussie quarters, aiming for 45 recoveries and 68 efforts ran two 43/68.0/46/68.8 and I was already hurting and called it rather than put myself in a hole. Ran back to school and went out to dinner with the other teachers... Not my proudest day
Wednesday PM road 10, 1:07:25, felt perhaps even shittier than yesterday. Felt like I wanted to stop and take a nap from the gun
Thursday AM road 4 with Uta, 29:10
PM road 10, 1:04:06
Friday -No school- AM at Phillips, 3+ warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 31 and a 600 jog. felt good, a couple of the strides were in the 14.1 range, now there was a strong tailwind but my fastest 100 ever is a 13.9 or so and that was during an actual hurricane so you can imagine that tailwind. 5x2k running each rep as alternations running the just under 70 and then about 80 for the laps. 4mins recovery with a 400 meter jog. 6:08, 6:07, 6:08, 6:08, 6:07 for the 2ks. Very windy. Honestly I'm happy with the workout as run but given the wind it was actually much better than it looks. 3.5 cool down.
late AM Anna for massage
PM 3.5 miles with Uta and Melissa, her first run back as she recovers from Lyme.
Saturday AM road 8.2, 54:21, not as sore as I expected after yesterday.
PM road 8.1 with Uta, 54:41
Sunday AM road 6, 40:35
PM road 10, 1:03:12
Summary around 97 miles for the week. only one decent workout but the first week of school is always a shit show so I'll take it. I have another short week next week with only 4 days and then it will be full weeks for a while. Starting to race back into shape this coming week with the GBTC xc meet. Then Cow harbor the following week.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Training blog August 21 to 27, 2017 moving forward
Monday Off- drove back from Cincinnati. Left about 4am actually made great time and could have snuck in a run on the home end in the late evening but I had made the decision to take an off day already and just went for a 2 mile walk to try and uncurl the body.
Tuesday AM road 10+ with Pat Rich around Topsfield, nice loop, hot day,1:07:28, did some light strides after.
Wednesday AM At Phillips, 3 mile warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 31, 600 jog. Then 4x800 meters run HARD and stupid, ie out very fast and rig up and die. This is to drive the latic acid as high as possible with each rep rather than run them as fast as you can. Basically I ran each of them like I would have in high school. Out in 30/31 for 200, there was a decent wind in the 2nd 200 so I'd be 64/65 at the 400 and then just a war from there to the finish. After each 800 I would take 2 minutes recovery and then do 4x10 hill sprints. My hill was at best 30m so I added on a bit of flat at the bottom and top, jog down recoveries after each hill repeat. After the last rep I would take 2 minutes before the next 800. This obviously included the jog back down the hill and over to the start on the track. I ran the 800's in 2:13.6, 2:14.0, 2:14.7, 2:15.0. After the last 2minute recovery I did 4x500m where I would run the first 200m in 33 then go straight into bounding the next 100m then I would TRY to run the last 200 meters in 33- I think the closest I came was low 34 on the last one. The bounding 100 took me about 25 seconds each time. I would take 4 minutes recovery with about 200 meters of walking after each. I did them in 1:34, 1:31, 1:29, 1:28. I was then completely running late so I did a 1k cool down. This is a base phase mas lass workout from Canova's stuff for 3k to 10k running. This is the first time I have done it and it was VERY intense. I was almost afraid to start the last 800 because it was getting so painful...
PM road 5 with Uta, too hot for her so we were slow, 36:47
Thursday AM road 10, 1:08:16, very sore and tired
PM road 5 with Uta, very sore still, 36:15
Friday AM road 10, 1:06:40, tired but not sore.
PM road 5 with Uta, 34:46, tired.
Saturday AM road 5 with Uta, 34:39
PM At Chelmsford rail trail, 3 warm up, drills, strides, 5x2miles- with 3 minutes of drills for recovery. The rail trail is very flat but it is sort of false flat uphill one way and false flat down hill on the other. Not enough so most people would notice but if you put a tennis ball down it would roll. Reps 1,3,5 were 'down'. Reps 2 and 4 were 'up'. I ran 10:11, 10:19, 10:04, 10:18, 10:00. This actually felt really good. 4.5 mile cool down- was doing 2 miles but toward the end I ran into Kara Haas and really wanted to see how she was progressing on a recent injury and so I ran with her. Now I had breakfast after the first run but because this was an early PM workout I hadn't had lunch. By the end of the extended cool down I was pretty well tuckered out as the whole thing was over 18 miles and drills burn a lot more energy than their mileage indicates. Plus that was 10 miles of work in 50:52.
Sunday AM road 10.1, 1:07:57.
PM road 5 with Uta, 35:13
Summary 95 or so miles for the week. Two very good workouts. After Rye harbor I couldn't help but be worried. I didn't have very high expectations but I thought my training had been moving in the right direction and I was very disappointed to run that poorly. As I have pointed out a number of times base work should improve your workouts much more than your racing but to be over 32 minutes was still pretty crushing. That starts to look like a poor tempo run rather than a race. If I had gone out hard and died I would have paid little or no mind to that as when you go out too hard it is impossible to gauge what you could have accomplished with smarter running other than to know you are not fit enough to go out at the pace you went out in. However I had run quite sensibly and still really struggled. I mentioned in last weeks blog that it sort of hit me on my tired warm up for the hill repeats that I felt anemic and that anemia could be a real good explanation for why a 32 minute 10k hurt that bad. I don't want to disparage a 32 minute 10k too much it is just that after college I have only run that slow a handful of times. Once in 2008 on super tough course with Anemia. Maybe once in '05 or '06 on the same very tough course with very tough heat as well. After that I ran like 40 minutes for a trail/mountain race in Vermont during mud season and I ran 32 mid at Lone Gull last fall off of some light jogging and yoga coming back from that stress fracture. All this is to say that since about 2004 even when I have run bad over 10k I have generally been able to salvage a 31. Anyway warming up for Saturday's workout I felt quite tired and it seemed like either I hadn't eaten enough or I was feeling anemic. I have been taking iron since Monday and been eating a good bit of red meat as well. As soon as I hit the first split on the rail trail at 1/5 of a mile in 5:00 pace and feeling good I knew I had been right about the iron being low. I felt great. In fact in the last quarter mile of the first 2 mile rep I was feeling so good I couldn't resist checking my heart rate, 118. Now I'm assuming it was up higher than that for much of the rep but even to settle down like that late in a rep I must have been pretty relaxed. I was still worried about the full workout. Often with longer aerobic workouts when my iron has been low and is just starting to come back I'll start the session feeling normal again and then somewhere midway the wheels just come off but today was great all the way through. I never really pushed, though I will admit my legs were tired on the last rep. This is really good news as I really want to slip under 31 at Cow Harbor in a 3 or 4 weeks and 32, even though it was solo, did not make that look to likely. This weeks workouts and the 15:10 solo a couple weeks ago line up with being ready to do that by the middle of next month so I'm happy that the poor time at Rye seems to have been a blip.
This week school starts up again so I have a weird schedule. I think I have an open house Tuesday night and I'm not going to be ready to workout again until Tuesday so I'm going to have to try and sneak in workout from school and try and track down a shower there before parents start arriving. I have also become quite inefficient with my time as summer went on and with the start of the school year I won't have anytime to waste if I'm going to get everything done so the first week is always a rough transition.
Tuesday AM road 10+ with Pat Rich around Topsfield, nice loop, hot day,1:07:28, did some light strides after.
Wednesday AM At Phillips, 3 mile warm up, drills, strides, 200m in 31, 600 jog. Then 4x800 meters run HARD and stupid, ie out very fast and rig up and die. This is to drive the latic acid as high as possible with each rep rather than run them as fast as you can. Basically I ran each of them like I would have in high school. Out in 30/31 for 200, there was a decent wind in the 2nd 200 so I'd be 64/65 at the 400 and then just a war from there to the finish. After each 800 I would take 2 minutes recovery and then do 4x10 hill sprints. My hill was at best 30m so I added on a bit of flat at the bottom and top, jog down recoveries after each hill repeat. After the last rep I would take 2 minutes before the next 800. This obviously included the jog back down the hill and over to the start on the track. I ran the 800's in 2:13.6, 2:14.0, 2:14.7, 2:15.0. After the last 2minute recovery I did 4x500m where I would run the first 200m in 33 then go straight into bounding the next 100m then I would TRY to run the last 200 meters in 33- I think the closest I came was low 34 on the last one. The bounding 100 took me about 25 seconds each time. I would take 4 minutes recovery with about 200 meters of walking after each. I did them in 1:34, 1:31, 1:29, 1:28. I was then completely running late so I did a 1k cool down. This is a base phase mas lass workout from Canova's stuff for 3k to 10k running. This is the first time I have done it and it was VERY intense. I was almost afraid to start the last 800 because it was getting so painful...
PM road 5 with Uta, too hot for her so we were slow, 36:47
Thursday AM road 10, 1:08:16, very sore and tired
PM road 5 with Uta, very sore still, 36:15
Friday AM road 10, 1:06:40, tired but not sore.
PM road 5 with Uta, 34:46, tired.
Saturday AM road 5 with Uta, 34:39
PM At Chelmsford rail trail, 3 warm up, drills, strides, 5x2miles- with 3 minutes of drills for recovery. The rail trail is very flat but it is sort of false flat uphill one way and false flat down hill on the other. Not enough so most people would notice but if you put a tennis ball down it would roll. Reps 1,3,5 were 'down'. Reps 2 and 4 were 'up'. I ran 10:11, 10:19, 10:04, 10:18, 10:00. This actually felt really good. 4.5 mile cool down- was doing 2 miles but toward the end I ran into Kara Haas and really wanted to see how she was progressing on a recent injury and so I ran with her. Now I had breakfast after the first run but because this was an early PM workout I hadn't had lunch. By the end of the extended cool down I was pretty well tuckered out as the whole thing was over 18 miles and drills burn a lot more energy than their mileage indicates. Plus that was 10 miles of work in 50:52.
Sunday AM road 10.1, 1:07:57.
PM road 5 with Uta, 35:13
Summary 95 or so miles for the week. Two very good workouts. After Rye harbor I couldn't help but be worried. I didn't have very high expectations but I thought my training had been moving in the right direction and I was very disappointed to run that poorly. As I have pointed out a number of times base work should improve your workouts much more than your racing but to be over 32 minutes was still pretty crushing. That starts to look like a poor tempo run rather than a race. If I had gone out hard and died I would have paid little or no mind to that as when you go out too hard it is impossible to gauge what you could have accomplished with smarter running other than to know you are not fit enough to go out at the pace you went out in. However I had run quite sensibly and still really struggled. I mentioned in last weeks blog that it sort of hit me on my tired warm up for the hill repeats that I felt anemic and that anemia could be a real good explanation for why a 32 minute 10k hurt that bad. I don't want to disparage a 32 minute 10k too much it is just that after college I have only run that slow a handful of times. Once in 2008 on super tough course with Anemia. Maybe once in '05 or '06 on the same very tough course with very tough heat as well. After that I ran like 40 minutes for a trail/mountain race in Vermont during mud season and I ran 32 mid at Lone Gull last fall off of some light jogging and yoga coming back from that stress fracture. All this is to say that since about 2004 even when I have run bad over 10k I have generally been able to salvage a 31. Anyway warming up for Saturday's workout I felt quite tired and it seemed like either I hadn't eaten enough or I was feeling anemic. I have been taking iron since Monday and been eating a good bit of red meat as well. As soon as I hit the first split on the rail trail at 1/5 of a mile in 5:00 pace and feeling good I knew I had been right about the iron being low. I felt great. In fact in the last quarter mile of the first 2 mile rep I was feeling so good I couldn't resist checking my heart rate, 118. Now I'm assuming it was up higher than that for much of the rep but even to settle down like that late in a rep I must have been pretty relaxed. I was still worried about the full workout. Often with longer aerobic workouts when my iron has been low and is just starting to come back I'll start the session feeling normal again and then somewhere midway the wheels just come off but today was great all the way through. I never really pushed, though I will admit my legs were tired on the last rep. This is really good news as I really want to slip under 31 at Cow Harbor in a 3 or 4 weeks and 32, even though it was solo, did not make that look to likely. This weeks workouts and the 15:10 solo a couple weeks ago line up with being ready to do that by the middle of next month so I'm happy that the poor time at Rye seems to have been a blip.
This week school starts up again so I have a weird schedule. I think I have an open house Tuesday night and I'm not going to be ready to workout again until Tuesday so I'm going to have to try and sneak in workout from school and try and track down a shower there before parents start arriving. I have also become quite inefficient with my time as summer went on and with the start of the school year I won't have anytime to waste if I'm going to get everything done so the first week is always a rough transition.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Weekly Training Blog August 14 to 20, 2017
I had a lot going on this week with the end of summer and the start of the school year approaching. This included driving to Cincinnati, OH on Friday to help my Father in Law who works down there and splits his time between Mass and Ohio, move into a house he bought. I drove back on Monday, yesterday, which is why this blog is late.
Monday AM 2.5 mile warm up with some drills and light strides, 14 mile fundamental tempo run around Phillips fields drifting from around 5:50 pace at the start down to 5:24 for the last mile, felt real good. It helped that temps were down around 80 and the humidity was under 50%. Ran 1:19:17 for the 14 miles, about 5:40 pace.
Early PM drills, lifting and a circuit with Anna, then a bit of massage. The massage hurt a lot more than the circuit.
PM 4 miles with Uta and Melissa around Phillips fields in 32:31.
Tuesday early PM road 10 solo in 1:06:31
later in PM 4.5 miles around Phillips fields with Melissa and Uta in 36:25
Wednesday AM road 5 with Uta in 35:07, bit hot for her
PM road 10 in 1:07:31, trying to take it easy
Thursday no run in the AM but I did a few miles of walking with Uta, then loaded a Uhaul with furniture for the Father in Law, then cut down a dying tree in my yard that was dangerously close to the power lines. This got a bit squirrely but a neighbor had a wedge with saved my butt- I owe him an edible arrangement or something!
PM 3.5 easy warm up with fellow UML alum Jason Dedonato, aka Dedo, we missed a turn. Then some strides and a 30 second hard effort, few drills mixed in. Race Saunders at Rye harbor 10k, goal was to run the first half at 5:10 pace and then open up. Course is pretty flat, sorta false flat uphill for two miles after a flat opener, then false flat down hill for two miles before a flat last 2k. I was in second until a water stop at about 2k then steadily pulled away. Hit 3 miles in 15:29 but didn't feel nearly as good as I had hoped. I ran 5:07 then 5:03 and then had to fight like hell for a 5:15 and a long slow finish in 32:07, meaning that 6 mark may have been a bit short. Not very happy with this but tried to remind myself that during the base you need to judge yourself based on your workouts not your races but I felt like I should be able to almost tempo a 32 at this point and really expected to be more in the 31:20 to 31:40 range at this point based on the 5k a couple weeks ago. 3+ cool down with Dedo.
Friday 5AM 8 miles easy in 58 minutes then about 15 hours in a Uhaul. Importantly I learned that Arby's makes a mean chocolate shake...
Saturday AM road 12 pretty hilly, 1:21:14, felt ok at best spent rest of day mostly moving furniture and eating junk food.
Sunday AM 3 mile warm up, light drills, 4x very steep .27 mile hill repeats with slow jog down- so steep I didn't have much choice about this. ran 2:10, 2:11, 2:11, 2:07. According to strava the grade on this bad larry was 19% and I believe it. Very much like Mount Washington in terms of steapness. I was very happy that my calves and glutes were burning and hurting on this as well as my quads. That is not normal for me, in fact it is the first time my glutes have really burned on hills in my life and I'm hoping that is sign of better form. 2.5 mile cool down
Summary low 90's for mileage, three good efforts. I was really feeling like shit most of the week and it could be the heat and the travel but as I was warming up on Sunday I sort of recognized that I felt like my iron was getting a bit low. After it got too high a long while back I stopped taking iron supplements and recently I have not been eating nearly as much red meat. Also in the summer is when I generally had trouble with this. I am taking some dietary steps to address this and may get blood work, though it is unlikely I'll have time this week, if I do I'll post it. However if this is the case I expect that an increased intake of iron and some cooler weather will make a world of difference. I was super anemic in the summer of 2008 and after running a couple of 32 minute plus 10k type efforts in late June/early August and some abysmal workouts I got after the red meat and a few other things and the weather cooled off and I ran two of my best 10k's ever at The Classic 10k in Atlanta, 30:33 for a savagely hilly course getting some great scalps I finished one place ahead of a 2:08 guy and once place behind a guy who had run mid 28's at Peachtree that year. Then a 29:44 at Cow Harbor which is still my best time on that course and the only time I beat Jason Lehmkuhle. It would be really nice if this is the case again this year as I really want to be sub 31 at cow harbor this year and just a little sharpening work alone isn't likely to pull me from 32:07 to that in 5 weeks.
Hope you are running well and looking forward to cross country!
Monday AM 2.5 mile warm up with some drills and light strides, 14 mile fundamental tempo run around Phillips fields drifting from around 5:50 pace at the start down to 5:24 for the last mile, felt real good. It helped that temps were down around 80 and the humidity was under 50%. Ran 1:19:17 for the 14 miles, about 5:40 pace.
Early PM drills, lifting and a circuit with Anna, then a bit of massage. The massage hurt a lot more than the circuit.
PM 4 miles with Uta and Melissa around Phillips fields in 32:31.
Tuesday early PM road 10 solo in 1:06:31
later in PM 4.5 miles around Phillips fields with Melissa and Uta in 36:25
Wednesday AM road 5 with Uta in 35:07, bit hot for her
PM road 10 in 1:07:31, trying to take it easy
Thursday no run in the AM but I did a few miles of walking with Uta, then loaded a Uhaul with furniture for the Father in Law, then cut down a dying tree in my yard that was dangerously close to the power lines. This got a bit squirrely but a neighbor had a wedge with saved my butt- I owe him an edible arrangement or something!
PM 3.5 easy warm up with fellow UML alum Jason Dedonato, aka Dedo, we missed a turn. Then some strides and a 30 second hard effort, few drills mixed in. Race Saunders at Rye harbor 10k, goal was to run the first half at 5:10 pace and then open up. Course is pretty flat, sorta false flat uphill for two miles after a flat opener, then false flat down hill for two miles before a flat last 2k. I was in second until a water stop at about 2k then steadily pulled away. Hit 3 miles in 15:29 but didn't feel nearly as good as I had hoped. I ran 5:07 then 5:03 and then had to fight like hell for a 5:15 and a long slow finish in 32:07, meaning that 6 mark may have been a bit short. Not very happy with this but tried to remind myself that during the base you need to judge yourself based on your workouts not your races but I felt like I should be able to almost tempo a 32 at this point and really expected to be more in the 31:20 to 31:40 range at this point based on the 5k a couple weeks ago. 3+ cool down with Dedo.
Friday 5AM 8 miles easy in 58 minutes then about 15 hours in a Uhaul. Importantly I learned that Arby's makes a mean chocolate shake...
Saturday AM road 12 pretty hilly, 1:21:14, felt ok at best spent rest of day mostly moving furniture and eating junk food.
Sunday AM 3 mile warm up, light drills, 4x very steep .27 mile hill repeats with slow jog down- so steep I didn't have much choice about this. ran 2:10, 2:11, 2:11, 2:07. According to strava the grade on this bad larry was 19% and I believe it. Very much like Mount Washington in terms of steapness. I was very happy that my calves and glutes were burning and hurting on this as well as my quads. That is not normal for me, in fact it is the first time my glutes have really burned on hills in my life and I'm hoping that is sign of better form. 2.5 mile cool down
Summary low 90's for mileage, three good efforts. I was really feeling like shit most of the week and it could be the heat and the travel but as I was warming up on Sunday I sort of recognized that I felt like my iron was getting a bit low. After it got too high a long while back I stopped taking iron supplements and recently I have not been eating nearly as much red meat. Also in the summer is when I generally had trouble with this. I am taking some dietary steps to address this and may get blood work, though it is unlikely I'll have time this week, if I do I'll post it. However if this is the case I expect that an increased intake of iron and some cooler weather will make a world of difference. I was super anemic in the summer of 2008 and after running a couple of 32 minute plus 10k type efforts in late June/early August and some abysmal workouts I got after the red meat and a few other things and the weather cooled off and I ran two of my best 10k's ever at The Classic 10k in Atlanta, 30:33 for a savagely hilly course getting some great scalps I finished one place ahead of a 2:08 guy and once place behind a guy who had run mid 28's at Peachtree that year. Then a 29:44 at Cow Harbor which is still my best time on that course and the only time I beat Jason Lehmkuhle. It would be really nice if this is the case again this year as I really want to be sub 31 at cow harbor this year and just a little sharpening work alone isn't likely to pull me from 32:07 to that in 5 weeks.
Hope you are running well and looking forward to cross country!
Thursday, August 17, 2017
Planning a Training Schedule Basics; how to periodize your training to run your best
The most important part of planning a full training cycle is to understand that training can be mostly dropped into three categories. Training to improve your general physical qualities which may or may not make you race faster on its own but increases your ability to do more specific training. Two, training to improve your ability to run fast generally, but not necessarily over a specific distance. Three, workouts that directly increase your ability to run faster over a specific distance but may or may not improve your actual fitness. Put another way you do workouts to build the ability to do workouts that build the ability to run fast finally you do workouts to shape your fitness to perform your best at a specific distance.
How you go about accomplishing this with your workouts is very much up to interpretation. You may choose to do basically the same workouts year round and to change how they are executed in order to accomplish the goals of your season. You may choose to do very different workouts for each phase to a such a degree that a sample week from each phase would seem completely unrelated. As long as you have embraced the general idea of progressing workouts to build to a peak set of races and a new plane of fitness you are ready to lay out your schedule.
Step one in setting your schedule has to be time. When is your goal race? How many weeks do you have between now and then. If the answer to that question is much less than twelve and you are not already about as good as you think you can be long term then I would suggest that you pick another goal race. It is certainly possible to get ready to race in 10 weeks, or even less time, but you are not going to make any step forward in your general fitness. Basically you can only run up to your stored potential not change your baseline. So for example Nick Willis was hurt this spring and only started running 10 weeks before worlds. His first workout was only 7 weeks before worlds. The result? He finished 8th. So frankly the results were awesome. The thing to remember is Nick's baseline after all these years is incredibly high, there are no major breakthroughs left to make. He is within spitting distance of the limits of the human body as we understand them today. I have little doubt that if this was 15 years ago and Nick was in college and running just under 4:00 for the mile he and his coach would have approached things differently targeted fall cross country, trained through worlds, got knocked out in the heats at worlds, and made another step towards becoming the sub 3:50 miler and two time Olympic Medalist that he is.
This raises the question is there a block of time that is too long? Arthur Lydiard would say no, he liked to do year long cycles. Personally I find that though I can make a cycle longer than 6 months work I don't seem to improve as much as if I break that period of time into two cycles. So if you are looking at something in the 8 to 12 month range I would find another target race about half way between now and your big goal race to target as an interim goal. In the long run I think you will find you will run better in the big goal race doing it that way.
Once you know how much time you have you can create your cycles. If your goal race is a marathon then you are going to taper for 1 to 3 weeks before the race and the rest of your season you will be training pretty hard. If your goal race is shorter you may want to create a racing season of 4 to 8 weeks around it where your mileage is low, 50 to 60% of your normal volume, with lower volume, high intensity workouts and a lot of racing, at least one per week. I would put the main goal race 2 to 4 weeks into this race phase, the first couple of weeks of lighter volume will serve as the taper and realizing that after 4 to 8 weeks of training at this lower volume your fitness will start to erode.
For your specific phase you want to plan 5 to 7 weeks. You can squeak by with 4 weeks particularly if you are doing a shorter distance racing season like described above. You can stretch this to 8 weeks, particularly if you are focused on a marathon or half marathon and have a half marathon or two slipped into the specific phase as tune up races. Keep in mind that there are limited returns on the specific phase. Meaning that if you go too long you will not get faster. This is the training that shapes your fitness not the phase that builds it. You polish the diamond but you aren't making it bigger or harder.
Some people do a very clear middle phase, a pre-competition or special phase. For me it is always the transition period from the end of the base and the beginning of the specific phase. So in my case it isn't well defined. I may be doing a workout that is really a special phase workout for one system while my other workout the same week is really still firmly in the base phase. Either way this phase should really be three or four weeks. Five at the absolute most. You are starting to do some very hard, and in the case of the 10k down, very anaerobic workouts here. On top of that your volume is still very high. If you push this phase too long you are just going to end up sick or hurt.
The rest of your time is the base phase. For me this is a period that naturally progresses into the special phase and I adjust the progression of my workouts based on how much time I have. You have a lot of flexibility in the length of this cycle. The work you are doing may be hard but it isn't as tough on your system as some of the other phases so you can,in a jam, easily train like this for 3 months or even more. Ideally I suggest 6 to 8 weeks but longer is ok.
You can get away with less but this is the phase where the work is done for big improvements so you are selling yourself short if you are cutting this cycle short. However in a situation like high school or college where you are running three seasons this can be tough. My advice in those situations is to follow a program that has less variation from cycle to cycle so that you can always be in acceptable racing shape but utilize subtle adjustments so that you are actually targeting long term improvement. Also during the early part of the indoor and outdoor seasons try to hit a couple of very good base phase workouts. For example a strong fundamental tempo or two or a really good hill circuit workout. These are good because you need them but also if you have been doing a lot of race specific work you are really starting to get limited returns by the end of the season and doing these sort of workouts for a couple weeks gives your body a chance to target other systems and your mind a chance to focus on different tasks. This will not only be better for your physical development but also for your mental motivation and sanity. Then of course you can get in an extended base phase during the summer.
To set up your general outline go through this process:
A word on racing through the phases. It is ok to race in all of these phases but races that are run during the non- specific phase should not be tapered for, it is always ok to reduce training after to recover if needed. Also it is important to understand that improvements in the early and even middle phase may not translate directly to results in racing. This is more and more likely the case the shorter the race you run. It is key that you focus on the progression of your workouts during this time instead of any race or time trial to measure your fitness gains, as these can be misleading. For example lets say you ran 10:00 for two miles last spring and you are spending your summer doing base work after a couple weeks recovery back in June. Over the last couple months you have taken your fundamental tempo from 6 miles at 6 minute pace to 12 miles at 6 minute pace. You have also found that in your hill circuit you can now do 5 sets instead of the 3 you started with and your able to accomplish each set 5 to 10 seconds faster. You have made a huge jump in fitness! But if you go and run a two mile time trial with your teammates to kick off cross country season. You will likely run in the 10:20 range. This can seem like a failure. I mean you were so much faster in the spring. The key is that you have not been training to improve your race specifically. You have created in your body a fitness that will enable you to do the workouts needed to run a much faster 2 mile but you're not there right now. That is totally ok because your state championship is still almost three months away and you will be ready to split sub 10 on your way to 5k by the time it rolls around. You need to focus on the improvements in your workouts as a measure of your increased fitness.
That said don't panic if you do run 9:50 in our hypothetical time trial. As long as your base workouts have shown improvement it just means that your base fitness was so poor that you have been able to move past your sharpened up race fitness by improving it. Your in for some great improvements. However if you did improve greatly in the time trial but you hadn't seen improvement in your base workouts you may want to re-evaluate your training as you may be doing too much specific work and not enough general fitness work.
Next up you need to progress our workouts through the phases. All of your workouts should have a logical progression and a specific end goal. They may get longer, they may get faster, the recovery may get shorter, but each should have an end goal and a clear step by step progression there. That goal should be directly related to your race goal. If you are having trouble figuring this part out it can be helpful to think of it this way.
Let's look at how a couple of workouts might progress through the seasons. First let's stick with our 10:00 two miler heading into cross country. Looking at his specific pace work it is reasonable for this athlete to have a goal of 15:30 for a fast 5k, or a 5k goal pace of 5:00 mile pace. In the base phase I would have this athlete start with 10 to 20 200 meter reps at goal pace with 200 meters jogging or 1 minute standing recovery. The idea would be run the pace as even and as relaxed as possible. You don't want this to be a hard session. The second session would be 20 to 25 x 200 with the same rest, the same pace, and the same goal. We have simply extended the volume of the session. The third session would be 12x400 meters at goal pace with 2mins recovery, once again you have the same goal of relaxation. We have kept the global volume the same but increased the duration of each rep, moving us one step closer to our end goal of holding this pace for 5k with no breaks.
Keep in mind these sessions would be among the easiest of the base phase, as specific work is the least targeted during this phase. Moving into the special phase I would do the 12x400 again but now with only a 100 meter jog recovery, same pace but now the goal shifts a little. You still want to be as relaxed as possible but if the workout gets hard then you need to run as hard as needed to still hit the pace. At the end of the special phase I would extend this workout to something like 8 to 10x600m at goal pace with 200m rest. As you come into the special phase the frequency and the intensity of the specific workouts should increase. Also your max lass workouts should now involve a lot of specific pace running, and your alternations/threshold work could now involve a lot of specific pace running as well. The specific workout we have been tracking would be repeated a few more times during the specific phase, each time increasing the distance of the rep while not changing the pace or increasing the recovery.
Let's look at another type of workout and how it might be progressed. Mile repeats. Using our same athlete and assuming a mile PR in the 4:30 to 4:40 range I would have him start with a session like 6xmile at one minute slower than mile PB, so 5:30 to 5:40 with a full 3 minutes recovery. The goal of the session in this phase is to build muscular endurance and aerobic fitness. The reps should feel very relaxed and the recovery should seem to long. I would not progress this workout much through the base phase but I would repeat it a few times. Measuring improvement by how much more relaxed the athlete can feel. Moving into the special phase I would keep the number of reps, 6, and the rest, 3 minutes, the same but I would increase the pace. Trying to run 5 to 10 seconds faster, per mile, each time the workout is repeated. I would carry this type of increase into the specific phase. As the pace approaches 5:00 per mile this workout will get very hard and it may be necessary to decrease the volume to 4 or 5 repeats in order for the athlete to complete the session at 5:00 pace but in young or fast improving athletes you will often see them able to run the goal pace for 6 reps by the end of the specific phase. So in this case we have adjusted a workout to change it's focus rather than adjust the intensity of a workout to match the phase. As a side not if I was prepping the athlete for the 10k I would likely not drop the pace all the way to 5k pace instead stopping at 10k pace, say 5:10? for this athlete, but I would reduce the recovery to 1 or 2 mins or a 200 to 400 meter jog.
To sum up. Find your timeline. Plan for a taper or racing season, plan 4 to 6 weeks of specific training, 3 to 4 weeks of special training and the time you have remaining is for base work. Make sure that your workouts address all areas of fitness with particular focus on the four pillars of successful racing, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2017/08/four-pillars-of-training-for-fast.html. Make sure that your workouts all have a purpose, which often is to build the ability to do the next similar workout, and an end goal which should be to race a specific distance at a specific pace or competitive level.
How you go about accomplishing this with your workouts is very much up to interpretation. You may choose to do basically the same workouts year round and to change how they are executed in order to accomplish the goals of your season. You may choose to do very different workouts for each phase to a such a degree that a sample week from each phase would seem completely unrelated. As long as you have embraced the general idea of progressing workouts to build to a peak set of races and a new plane of fitness you are ready to lay out your schedule.
Step one in setting your schedule has to be time. When is your goal race? How many weeks do you have between now and then. If the answer to that question is much less than twelve and you are not already about as good as you think you can be long term then I would suggest that you pick another goal race. It is certainly possible to get ready to race in 10 weeks, or even less time, but you are not going to make any step forward in your general fitness. Basically you can only run up to your stored potential not change your baseline. So for example Nick Willis was hurt this spring and only started running 10 weeks before worlds. His first workout was only 7 weeks before worlds. The result? He finished 8th. So frankly the results were awesome. The thing to remember is Nick's baseline after all these years is incredibly high, there are no major breakthroughs left to make. He is within spitting distance of the limits of the human body as we understand them today. I have little doubt that if this was 15 years ago and Nick was in college and running just under 4:00 for the mile he and his coach would have approached things differently targeted fall cross country, trained through worlds, got knocked out in the heats at worlds, and made another step towards becoming the sub 3:50 miler and two time Olympic Medalist that he is.
This raises the question is there a block of time that is too long? Arthur Lydiard would say no, he liked to do year long cycles. Personally I find that though I can make a cycle longer than 6 months work I don't seem to improve as much as if I break that period of time into two cycles. So if you are looking at something in the 8 to 12 month range I would find another target race about half way between now and your big goal race to target as an interim goal. In the long run I think you will find you will run better in the big goal race doing it that way.
Once you know how much time you have you can create your cycles. If your goal race is a marathon then you are going to taper for 1 to 3 weeks before the race and the rest of your season you will be training pretty hard. If your goal race is shorter you may want to create a racing season of 4 to 8 weeks around it where your mileage is low, 50 to 60% of your normal volume, with lower volume, high intensity workouts and a lot of racing, at least one per week. I would put the main goal race 2 to 4 weeks into this race phase, the first couple of weeks of lighter volume will serve as the taper and realizing that after 4 to 8 weeks of training at this lower volume your fitness will start to erode.
For your specific phase you want to plan 5 to 7 weeks. You can squeak by with 4 weeks particularly if you are doing a shorter distance racing season like described above. You can stretch this to 8 weeks, particularly if you are focused on a marathon or half marathon and have a half marathon or two slipped into the specific phase as tune up races. Keep in mind that there are limited returns on the specific phase. Meaning that if you go too long you will not get faster. This is the training that shapes your fitness not the phase that builds it. You polish the diamond but you aren't making it bigger or harder.
Some people do a very clear middle phase, a pre-competition or special phase. For me it is always the transition period from the end of the base and the beginning of the specific phase. So in my case it isn't well defined. I may be doing a workout that is really a special phase workout for one system while my other workout the same week is really still firmly in the base phase. Either way this phase should really be three or four weeks. Five at the absolute most. You are starting to do some very hard, and in the case of the 10k down, very anaerobic workouts here. On top of that your volume is still very high. If you push this phase too long you are just going to end up sick or hurt.
The rest of your time is the base phase. For me this is a period that naturally progresses into the special phase and I adjust the progression of my workouts based on how much time I have. You have a lot of flexibility in the length of this cycle. The work you are doing may be hard but it isn't as tough on your system as some of the other phases so you can,in a jam, easily train like this for 3 months or even more. Ideally I suggest 6 to 8 weeks but longer is ok.
You can get away with less but this is the phase where the work is done for big improvements so you are selling yourself short if you are cutting this cycle short. However in a situation like high school or college where you are running three seasons this can be tough. My advice in those situations is to follow a program that has less variation from cycle to cycle so that you can always be in acceptable racing shape but utilize subtle adjustments so that you are actually targeting long term improvement. Also during the early part of the indoor and outdoor seasons try to hit a couple of very good base phase workouts. For example a strong fundamental tempo or two or a really good hill circuit workout. These are good because you need them but also if you have been doing a lot of race specific work you are really starting to get limited returns by the end of the season and doing these sort of workouts for a couple weeks gives your body a chance to target other systems and your mind a chance to focus on different tasks. This will not only be better for your physical development but also for your mental motivation and sanity. Then of course you can get in an extended base phase during the summer.
To set up your general outline go through this process:
1. When is my goal race? count back your taper from that day.
2. Allow 4 to 6 weeks for specific training.
3. Allow 3 to 4 weeks for special training.
4. How much time does that leave? If it is less than 4 weeks strongly consider changing your goal race. This time is your base phase.
A word on racing through the phases. It is ok to race in all of these phases but races that are run during the non- specific phase should not be tapered for, it is always ok to reduce training after to recover if needed. Also it is important to understand that improvements in the early and even middle phase may not translate directly to results in racing. This is more and more likely the case the shorter the race you run. It is key that you focus on the progression of your workouts during this time instead of any race or time trial to measure your fitness gains, as these can be misleading. For example lets say you ran 10:00 for two miles last spring and you are spending your summer doing base work after a couple weeks recovery back in June. Over the last couple months you have taken your fundamental tempo from 6 miles at 6 minute pace to 12 miles at 6 minute pace. You have also found that in your hill circuit you can now do 5 sets instead of the 3 you started with and your able to accomplish each set 5 to 10 seconds faster. You have made a huge jump in fitness! But if you go and run a two mile time trial with your teammates to kick off cross country season. You will likely run in the 10:20 range. This can seem like a failure. I mean you were so much faster in the spring. The key is that you have not been training to improve your race specifically. You have created in your body a fitness that will enable you to do the workouts needed to run a much faster 2 mile but you're not there right now. That is totally ok because your state championship is still almost three months away and you will be ready to split sub 10 on your way to 5k by the time it rolls around. You need to focus on the improvements in your workouts as a measure of your increased fitness.
That said don't panic if you do run 9:50 in our hypothetical time trial. As long as your base workouts have shown improvement it just means that your base fitness was so poor that you have been able to move past your sharpened up race fitness by improving it. Your in for some great improvements. However if you did improve greatly in the time trial but you hadn't seen improvement in your base workouts you may want to re-evaluate your training as you may be doing too much specific work and not enough general fitness work.
Next up you need to progress our workouts through the phases. All of your workouts should have a logical progression and a specific end goal. They may get longer, they may get faster, the recovery may get shorter, but each should have an end goal and a clear step by step progression there. That goal should be directly related to your race goal. If you are having trouble figuring this part out it can be helpful to think of it this way.
What are the workouts needed to run X time for my goal race.?
Those are your final goal workouts.
Now what type of workouts would set someone up to do those workouts?
Those are your special and early specific workouts.
What type of workouts need to done to build the general fitness to do those workouts?
Those are your end of base phase workouts
What am I capable of doing right now for the type of workouts I want to run at the end of my base phase?
Those are your starting workouts
Let's look at how a couple of workouts might progress through the seasons. First let's stick with our 10:00 two miler heading into cross country. Looking at his specific pace work it is reasonable for this athlete to have a goal of 15:30 for a fast 5k, or a 5k goal pace of 5:00 mile pace. In the base phase I would have this athlete start with 10 to 20 200 meter reps at goal pace with 200 meters jogging or 1 minute standing recovery. The idea would be run the pace as even and as relaxed as possible. You don't want this to be a hard session. The second session would be 20 to 25 x 200 with the same rest, the same pace, and the same goal. We have simply extended the volume of the session. The third session would be 12x400 meters at goal pace with 2mins recovery, once again you have the same goal of relaxation. We have kept the global volume the same but increased the duration of each rep, moving us one step closer to our end goal of holding this pace for 5k with no breaks.
Keep in mind these sessions would be among the easiest of the base phase, as specific work is the least targeted during this phase. Moving into the special phase I would do the 12x400 again but now with only a 100 meter jog recovery, same pace but now the goal shifts a little. You still want to be as relaxed as possible but if the workout gets hard then you need to run as hard as needed to still hit the pace. At the end of the special phase I would extend this workout to something like 8 to 10x600m at goal pace with 200m rest. As you come into the special phase the frequency and the intensity of the specific workouts should increase. Also your max lass workouts should now involve a lot of specific pace running, and your alternations/threshold work could now involve a lot of specific pace running as well. The specific workout we have been tracking would be repeated a few more times during the specific phase, each time increasing the distance of the rep while not changing the pace or increasing the recovery.
Let's look at another type of workout and how it might be progressed. Mile repeats. Using our same athlete and assuming a mile PR in the 4:30 to 4:40 range I would have him start with a session like 6xmile at one minute slower than mile PB, so 5:30 to 5:40 with a full 3 minutes recovery. The goal of the session in this phase is to build muscular endurance and aerobic fitness. The reps should feel very relaxed and the recovery should seem to long. I would not progress this workout much through the base phase but I would repeat it a few times. Measuring improvement by how much more relaxed the athlete can feel. Moving into the special phase I would keep the number of reps, 6, and the rest, 3 minutes, the same but I would increase the pace. Trying to run 5 to 10 seconds faster, per mile, each time the workout is repeated. I would carry this type of increase into the specific phase. As the pace approaches 5:00 per mile this workout will get very hard and it may be necessary to decrease the volume to 4 or 5 repeats in order for the athlete to complete the session at 5:00 pace but in young or fast improving athletes you will often see them able to run the goal pace for 6 reps by the end of the specific phase. So in this case we have adjusted a workout to change it's focus rather than adjust the intensity of a workout to match the phase. As a side not if I was prepping the athlete for the 10k I would likely not drop the pace all the way to 5k pace instead stopping at 10k pace, say 5:10? for this athlete, but I would reduce the recovery to 1 or 2 mins or a 200 to 400 meter jog.
To sum up. Find your timeline. Plan for a taper or racing season, plan 4 to 6 weeks of specific training, 3 to 4 weeks of special training and the time you have remaining is for base work. Make sure that your workouts address all areas of fitness with particular focus on the four pillars of successful racing, http://nateruns.blogspot.com/2017/08/four-pillars-of-training-for-fast.html. Make sure that your workouts all have a purpose, which often is to build the ability to do the next similar workout, and an end goal which should be to race a specific distance at a specific pace or competitive level.
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