Friday, December 01, 2006

Why I need to write out my training plan

I am thinking seriously about adopting the minimalist 3-days-per-week marathon training plan from Runner's World. I was figuring out my FIRST training paces based on my last 10K race in which I finished in 1:03:24.

But I didn't actually write any of it out - I was just figuring out the paces partly in a spreadsheet but mostly in my head.

Then yesterday I went over to the track thinking I'd try to see how I did on four 1-mile repeats. I had a 2:20 lap/9:20 mile pace in mind for repeats for some dumb reason. Which, in retrospect, makes absolutely no sense at all, because my one mile PR right now is 9:23. And I finished a 5-mile track workout just 2 days prior.

So I managed ONE 9:46 mile, at a maximal effort level. And limped around the track for another few miles in the 12-minute range.

This is what happens when I don't do my usual meticulous planning! Winging it just doesn't work! Back to the drawing board. . . . Yeah, I could pay a coach to do the math for me, but I trust the calculations more if I do them myself. And then write down my answers, circled.

6 comments:

IronWaddler said...

I went to the Runner's world site and used the training pace calculator. I can get the miles but needed to know how to run them.

Nancy Toby said...

Yeah, I've used that too and it's a great tool! These paces are somewhat faster, though. Too fast for me, maybe!

Nancy Toby said...

Hype and spam.

Vickie said...

And you know what you are capable of doing realistically. Having been around a while, I always think back to things that worked way back when and try to adopt them back into my training now, but on a much reduced pace scale. One thing that seemed to work well, and made sense overall if you want to go minimalist, was a 4 day a week routine: three runs a week and one long run of 10-12 miles, building from there. Ideally, a minimalist maintenance routine would be 6 miles, 3 times a week, and one 10-12 mile. This would allow time to do "triathlon" stuff other days. Sigh, I wish I could get up to even half that. Let me know if you come up with an ideal schedule. I'm working on just getting in a 3 mile interval workout as being my big workout this week: 3 x 1 mile with walk breaks between at whatever speed I can maintain right now without pushing it.

Steve said...

Nancy,

I feel your pain. Ran my first HM in October. I found out the hard way with speed workouts. When you overdo it, you can really damage the rest of your training week (fatigue or worse-injury). I ran one too hard in August. I was all proud of my "superfast" pace. The next day(s) I felt like I was hit by a truck.

Anyway, I used the McMillan calculator for my intervals - plugged in the time of a recent 5k race (and it worked fine when I actually got smart and followed it, ha ha).

Iron Pol said...

First, congratulations on the tolerance. That comment from Mark wouldn't have made it past my first check of the e-mail. At least it's minimally related to athletics. Most of my spam comments are for complete garbage.

As for the pace situation, are you seeking a target pace, or just trying to figure out training levels?

I spent most of last winter training at what I considered a very slow pace. Within about 8 weeks of my first "A" race, I added some speedwork (probably too much). That groundwork allowed me to shave 45 minutes off of my marathon PR. (Well, that and something like 25 pounds lost).