What, When, Wha?

TEDIOUS ALERT! There's good stuff here to learn and understand, but you'd better go get a cup of coffee...

OK, so let's talk about what the thinking behind the schedule is. This is incredibly long, and as mentioned, tedious. But I think it's important to understand the "why" of what I'm asking of you, here.

Basically, I have a giant, wall-filling six month calendar. I write down all the workouts for the season, including your solo runs on small strips of paper, twist-tie them to darts, blindfold myself, and throw them at the calendar. It's an amazing system, actually, though the cat doesn't always clear the room, so part of your fee goes for vet bills.

Sometimes, however, I actually plan this thing out, and there's a method to my madness.

First off, there are some reputable and probably successful marathon or half-marathon programs out there that will train you for 19 weeks. Every now and then, Runner's World runs a headline that you can do it in three weeks, for just pennies a day or some crap.

I used to train in and coach in a program that ran for six months. Despite wanting to try to be as different from them as possible, I looked at other similar programs, and 24 weeks seemed to be somewhat of an industry standard. For one thing, the math works out - bring in half-marathoners that are capable of running the reasonable and common distance of three to four miles, see what you have to build them up to, and if you're into the use of macrocycles (as we are), it gives you a nice period of time to do a steadily progressive program. Same with marathoners.

Now, this macrocycle thing. Again, this is not anyone's patented system. No running group, in Austin or otherwise, owns it or is maverick in their employment of it. In fact, I believe all the major groups in Austin use some form of it. Here's an excerpt from a paper by Dr. Atko Viru, who has a very impressive scientist-y name:

The potentiality of intensive adaptive changes in the organism are limited by the adaptive energy (Selye, 1960), or the adaptive capacity reserves. The exhausted reserves are, as a rule, restored by relative rest (reduction of the training volume). However, further intensive training and competition loads will progressively exhaust the adaptive reserves and can lead to a drop in the performance and finally result in overtraining. It is impossible to assume that an athlete can meet the requests of the competition calendar set by organizers and remain in peak form for six months or even longer. Even the organism of an athlete needs rest.

Ah, gotcha. Science! So... just what the hell does that mean? Simply, ya gotta rest. You keep increasing the workload, or even trying to maintain a high level of distance and intensity, and you're gonna poop out, burn out, or worse, get injured. Sorry if that's still too much technobabble for you.

So, you'll see that we'll build in distance for a couple of weeks, then you'll get a recovery "week". This is mainly visible in our long run miles, though I also take into account total distance for the week, and the intensity of our weekday workouts, as much as one can for a group of athletes with somewhat different abilities and needs. There's also the fact that a general principle of running is that you don't want to increase long run mileage or total mileage by more than 10% a week. A few times, we might breach that by a couple of points, but if it's more than that, I'll make up for it with a flatter route, or a less intense Tuesday workout.

Now, as for the weekly schedule, there are probably very scienc-y principles underlying this, but basically I'm going by what I learned worked from my own training. It's about getting a rhythm in your training that, like the macrocyle method, incorporates intensity and recovery.

Let's look at this as Monday through Sunday, with Saturday long runs, and Tuesday intensity workouts. On Monday, you're still a bit stiff and sore from Saturday, unless you slept in/didn't set your alarm, Dina and Carmen. So, a nice, easy run seems to work that out. You might feel a bit clunky starting the run, but by the end, unless you push the pace too much, you'll work out the kinks.

Tuesday, I try to hurt you.

Wednesday, at least in the beginning, you need to rest. Rest is a very real need. You might feel like a running machine, unbreakable and... untirable or something. Well, if you are, then you need a much more bad-assed coach than me. Your body needs to heal its muscles, its joints, and its brain, even. So, your cross-training should be low- to no-impact, and relatively low intensity in terms of workload on your legs and cardiovascular system. Do stuff that will get the blood flowing, keep you moving, build upper-body and core strength, or work on your flexibility.

Thursday, run again. Again, with the clunkiness, and, if you haven't been diligent about stretching, maybe some stiffness and soreness. Again, in addition to building mileage, this helps work out the kinks from Tuesday, and set you up to be at your best Saturday.

Friday right now is light cross training, and a bit of rest before your long run.

Sunday, you rest. Period. Learn to like watching football or something. But nothing too taxing, especially as the long runs get longer. I don't care how good you feel, your body needs the recovery, especially since you'll run again Monday and be getting your butt kicked again on Tuesday.

Now, there's reasons we'll deviate from the norm sometimes. There'll be races, most of them on Sunday, that we need to account for and work around. There's also be personal reasons. The big thing you don't want to do is try to make up mileage and runs in a haphazard way. So, let's look at a couple of real examples I got in my email in the past couple of days...

I did a good run this weekend. It was over a 7 mile run. Regarding the training schedule, are the days to cross train set in stone or are they flexible?

You probably have the answer from my explanation above. Again, the Sunday off is set in stone. Period. As for the placement of running and cross-training, the schedule is preferred, but if you need to, deviate from it. If you understand the principles above, you can make up for some of it by moving runs to mornings or evenings, to get those recovery runs in, and get as much actual rest-recovery as you need.

Here's another one:

I’m a mess this week- I have a meeting on Tues night so I’ll miss that run, Wednesday I have tennis practice so I can’t make it up then, and Saturday I have a tennis game at 8:30 (singles, so at least I’ll be running around a lot, but more sprints). To top that off, I managed to acquire a massive bruise on the back of my upper thigh on Saturday that is about the size of a softball which is so painful that it’s actually difficult to walk, sit in a chair, or even sleep. Blah. I’ve been icing it, but it’s just a bad bruise. So, all that to say, do you have any suggested runs I could do this week maybe on Thursday, Friday and/or Sunday? Maybe I could do the Clarkesville run on Thursday and the normal Sat. run on Sunday if my leg is feeling better.

So, lots of things going on, here. First of all, this runner needs to stop using two spaces after periods. That's an old-school holdover from the days before proportioned typefaces. But I digress. Hopefully, this runner will still get her three miles in today. At some point, she could pick up her miles or even the specific workout tomorrow morning. But, think about that - doing it in the morning is cutting recovery time in half, which may or may not be an issue, depending on the individual. If she can run in the mornings Monday and Tuesday, that would be ideal.

The ideal here would be to run the Tuesday workout early, and stick with the schedule, but let's say she can't do that.

I think running the workout Wednesday morning is her next-best option. If Wednesday night was a tournament, then she might just take an easy run that morning. Even with practice, she'll need to be sure to stretch, particularly after running hills. She should stretch right after, again later that day, and a little tiny bit before the practice, if she's feeling really tight. Then, she'd chill Thursday, and run Friday, in the morning, if possible, again to maximize the recovery time, which is not as critical now with our current mileage, but, still.

Now, a quick word on the extracurriculars. I wouldn't ask anyone to stop playing tennis or basketball or jai-alai, but just know that it complicates your training a bit, and each activity can increase the odds of injury in the other. Just sayin'. You'll need to be extra diligent in both sports, and as you get within a month or two of your goal race, you might consider backing off of a sport where you could roll and ankle and be sidelined from both sports.

If you're in doubt, or even just because you're bored, you can always run your schedule by me, and I'll try to suggest some alternatives. And, as a side note, I'm still working out the schedule, so some of the distances I have posted for two to three weeks from now might get tweaked a bit.