@DopeyBadger I'm looking for a little guidance. I'm trying to figure out how to chunk up between now and September, when I'll start focusing specifically on training for Dopey.
Because of how far I derailed myself this winter/spring, I pretty much need to focus on base building in the near-term, correct?
I'm comparing my Garmin calendar from this year to last year, and while I did more training in February and a little bit in March, I took almost all of April off, and did absolutely nothing in May (yay baseball season!) and jumped all the way back into things in June. So I feel like I'm probably close-ish to where I was last year, or at least should be in a couple of weeks.
I do want to at least
plan on doing some speedwork this summer.
If I focus on base building, is that doable on 4 days/week? Could I do it in 3 days/wk if I used a galloway plan and just started further into the plan, or not really? How long, reasonably, should I plan on doing base-building?
I have nothing on my schedule for races, so there's nothing on the calendar for me to work toward.
I'm all over the place with this mentally. I think I sorta know where I need to be starting right now (which is
doing something) but I'm not sure how aggressive I should be in re-starting. I'm about 22 weeks away from where I started my Dopey plan last year.
When trying to string together multiple training plans over the course of the year, you have a few considerations to taken into account.
1) What have I been doing lately?
You'll start here to determine where you need to start with the first training plan. If you just ended a training plan, then look to be at around 50% of the recent peak for a few weeks, and then build back into the next plan heading towards the next goal race. This down period of 50% of peak helps lower the training load you just ended at. By cycling up and down over the course of the year, you'll spend more time in optimal training loads which leads to more gains year over year. If you instead keep a static amount of training throughout most of the year, then you'll stagnate gains as you'll stay in a neutral area of training load the majority of the time.
But if you're not just coming off a previous training plan and instead a period of inconsistency or forced time off, then the approach needs to be different. You'll want to look at when you last were truly consistent or when the forced time off started. Use the method of "time off = time return". So if you were off 6 weeks due to an injury, then you need 6 weeks of return to easy running at a lower volume than you were at previous to the injury before you get back into training. And when you get back into training, you don't jump in where you were, but rather jump in when you left off. That's the safer route.
So to tie this back to you, based on your training journal, I would say you were last consistent with training heading into MW 2023 (January of this year). After that, you've done some training here and there, but haven't been able to be all that consistent with it. So I would say that you want to spend something like 12 weeks of just easy base building running. Just get back into a groove with no pressures on pace. Everything at an easy effort, no long runs, no paced efforts, no speed work. All runs where you go out, do the run, and come back feeling like you really didn't do anything at all. I would not exceed 60 min in any run during this period of time. Runs in the 30-45 min area are going to be your golden zone. I would also agree that starting off smaller around 3 days per week is going to be better. We're looking for consistency during this period of time. So let's be consistent with 3 days per week before we consider moving to 4 days per week. So, 12 weeks from now would be around the beginning of July for the end of the consistency training cycle.
2) Where do I want to end up?
Answering question 1 allows us to determine what the beginning of a training cycle should look like. As we saw in the first example, that may mean only 1-2 weeks before we jump back into training, or it may mean 10-12 weeks before we jump back into training. Situations are going to differ based on what came before the current cycle started. Once we know where we were, then we need to know where we want to go. So that's determining how many weeks there are before the "A" goal race.
If you were in the first situation and had 1-2 weeks of easy before resuming training, then you'd want to see at least 10-12 weeks before the next "A" goal race. It takes about 8 weeks minimally to truly see gains from a current training plan. So if you put "A" races too close together, then you should expect to make minimal gains between them. The longer time period allows better gains cycle over cycle. On the other side of it, you don't want to have many training plans that last much longer than 18-20 weeks. Too long and it's hard for the body to keep building to stay in the optimal zone. Mathematically you can, but the body doesn't tolerate the building of load much more than 10-14 weeks.
Now for you, you've got 22 weeks before Dopey training in September. We already decided on 12 weeks of easy running. So that'll leave you a nice 10 week short training plan before entering Dopey training. The question becomes, how much volume and what should I be doing during that 10 week training plan. So there comes the question of "where do I want to end up?". When you do the Dopey training in Sept-Jan, how much volume do you believe you can reasonably commit to? If it's 6-7 hrs per week, then you minimally/comfortably want to be able to do about 50% of that at the end of the training cycle proceeding it. So if you do 7 hrs at the peak of Dopey training, then you want to be able to do 3.5 hrs per week at the end of the 10 week speed cycle in July-Sept. You won't need to exceed 90-120 min on the long run, and justifiably should keep it at no more than 40% of the weekly mileage (preferably 25-30%) but that's not always possible on less days per week. So by the 10 week cycle you probably want to see if you can reasonably commit to and be consistent with 4 days per week. That'll give you 3 days where you're doing 30-60 min per day, and then a single longer run that gets up to 90 min.
Pace wise, at the tail end of the 12 week easy training cycle, I'd plan on doing some sort of race/time trial just to get a reasonably idea of current fitness. I wouldn't expect going into that race for a great performance compared to your PRs. Rather it's just data to provide you a good starting place as you work towards your ultimate goal. So don't be discouraged if your training paces end up slower than you had been doing. Just train where you are, and let the gains come naturally. As for the 10 weeks of speed work, I'd focus on something that's different than what you plan in the Dopey training cycle. Dopey is going to be more focused on long endurance. Long speed intervals of HM Tempo/M Tempo. So during the 10 week period, focus on 5k/10k pacing. Shorter intervals, shorter breaks, floating intervals, etc.
****
I think the most important part for you is to not over commit. You have a tendency to put too much on your plate. Start off small. Get the small victories day to day, week to week, and be consistent. But know a missed day here or there is fine. It won't wreck the big picture. If you had 100 workouts planned in a training plan, and you missed 1, then you still got 99% of the training benefits. Even 10 missed days is still 90% of the benefits. So commit to something small. Even 15-20 min of easy running is better than nothing. Hopefully that can snowball in a positive direction.
Let me know if this helps or I missed the mark.
), so I started off today with 2mi. I felt extremely slow, and I think it took my like 29min to complete, but it’s done and I can put an X on my training calendar page.
DISBoards doesn't have the hug emoji so here it is. Being a stay-at-home parent is no easy job.
