[Alan T]

So to continue from my post yesterday, in putting together my training for a half-marathon in September I have a training schedule that I plan to run. I have slowly increased my days running to 6 days a week now, and starting off the beginning of the plan with 31 miles the first week. That is pretty similar to where I left off in May, and in June I am planning a pretty steady 25-27 miles per week. So I don't see any issue with the weekly load to start.

My long runs to start will be 8miles, which once again is within the range that I have felt comfortable doing up until now, so I think I should be able to pick this plan up fairly comfortably to start. During the plan however, I'll slowly increase miles per week as well as long runs to the point late August I'll hit my max of 47 miles per week including a 15 mile long run. This is far greater than what I have done ever before, but part of the reason I am trying to work up to this for the half marathon.

Now, I know there are plenty of training plans that have people training for a half marathon by only running 10 miles as the longest before the race, and likewise those plans have people only running top of 20 miles per week, with half of their weekly run coming in that long run of 10 miles. Most people who do that are able to complete the half marathon, but they don't necessarily enjoy it.. I want to enjoy my running, and not do it because I feel that I have to. So I am choosing to build a much much larger base, where my long runs are not more than 30% of my weekly workload. I'm trying to keep in mind that it is the base that is more important than the rest, and by building the larger base, it will make the half marathon distance easier for me to handle, as well as trickle down to all of my other distances and make me able to run the 5k or 10k runs faster as well (or be able to maintain the faster pace longer without running out of my aerobic threshold).

In addition to the base, working in speed work every week is also pretty important, and I have roughly 10-15% of my weekly miles involving some kind of speed training from week 2 through week 10 of my training. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm planning on putting in Fartleks, Hills, Intervals, and Tempo Runs. It has been heavily stressed to me to start doing Strides as well during the end of easy runs, but I have never done those before and want to better understand when and where and how I should fit those in before I jump in on those.

Now that I have a fairly solid idea of what I want to do for training, that leaves the important part that I talked about yesterday of how fast it should be. The idea is to keep my easy runs easy so I am not too fatigued to do the hard workouts when those are due. For that, I need to know what my pacing should be for each type of workout, so I know exactly what I want to aim for pace wise when I go out there. That is where my Daniels spreadsheet comes in. It is a spreadsheet that I found somewhere on the internet at some point that has all kinds of great tables and tools for all different aspects of my running training....



There are some parts of the spreadsheet that I don't really use much, but I'll go through the parts that I do. To start, I put in my vitals, my birthdate, weight, resting heart rate, max HR, etc into the top left. Then next important I pick a recent race distance and time to put in, and chose to use my 5k 27:12 that I talked about yesterday. Once I put that data in, the spreadsheet does the rest like magic!

The first thing it figures out is my VDOT score based on my vitals. In this case, I score a 34.7, which is an improvement over the 33 that I had been working out with the past few months. When I first started running, I scored so low that it wouldn't even register anything for me (I guess scores below 30 don't do anything in most VDOT calculators). SO I have been pretty happy with the progress that I have made the past 8 months or so.

Now with the VDOT score calculated, it then spits out what expected race times would be for that VDOT score as well as giving information on Lactate threshold, and recovery/aerobic workout zones. This is the first part that is important for determining my training paces.

For much of my interval training, I'll have smaller periods of recovery in between. I might run 880 meters at a faster pace, but then recover for 440m at a recovery pace. This spreadsheet tells me that 12:30 would be my ideal recovery pace for restoring my heart rate and catching my breath in between intervals.

Even more importantly for me, the vast majority of my runs are at an Easy Pace. Taking again from the Daniels article that I posted yesterday is the discussion of my Easy and Long Pace Runs:

E and L Runs. When you do easy (E) runs to recover from strenuous periods of training or to carry out a second workout on a particular day, and when you do your long (L) runs, you should run at a pace which is very close to (E) (easy-run) velocity, which is about 70% of V02max. Long runs (L), improve cell adaptation, and lead to glycogen depletion and fluid loss (important considerations for distance runners), but should not be demanding in terms of the intensity (pace) being utilized.

Be advised that the benefits of "E-pace" running are more a function of time spent exercising than intensity of running, and 70% V02max, which corresponds to 75% vVO2max and 75% of HRmax, is all the harder you need to go to get the benefits you want at the cellular level and in the heart muscle.

So from the spreadsheet, my Easy Aerobic Zone, 70-75% of my HRmax would give me a pace of 10:54 - 11:38. Just for a comparison of how an increased VDOT score affects the training, my previous several months I had been running an easy pace of 11:37-12:04, so the next few months I will be taking my easy pace at roughly 30 seconds per mile faster. This is not a huge surprise to me as I had noticed for a few weeks that I have been able to handle 11:00min/mile without my HR climbing.




In the next part of the spreadsheet, it gives me Tempo Run pacing. A little information once again from Daniels on the Tempo Run pace training:

T Runs. Threshold pace is about 88% of V02max (90% of VO2max or of HRmax). Subjectively, T (threshold) pace is "comfortably-hard" running. For many people it is slower than I OK race pace and for most people it is about 24 see per mile slower than current 5K race pace.

In the caw of T-pace training, it is important to stay as close as possible to the prescribed speed; neither slower nor faster velocities do as good a job as does the proper speed. Here is a case where going too fast -- which many runners automatically try to do -- is simply not as good as running at the right pace. T-pace training improves your lactate threshold.

So for each period of time, the spreadsheet gives me a tempo run pace such as 9:11 min/mile for a 20 minute tempo run all the way to 9:41 for a 60 minute tempo run. In my training plan, my tempo runs are not defined by time but instead are by duration. I'll have a 3 mile and 4 mile tempo run which I'll handle at a 9:20 and 9:28 pace.

The next section gives me help on interval pacing, and my training plan has virtually all 880m interval workouts. So that is easy to see that I should be aiming for 4:13 for each of those, which works out as an 8:26 min/mile pace, not too horribly faster than where I was before on those. Here is the Daniels comments on my interval pacing:

I Pace. The next important training velocity is the one that stresses and improves V02max V02max-interval (I) velocity. The intensity here should be equal to vVO2max- I believe most people should shoot for 98% - 100% of HRmax, rather than always demanding a 100% value, if using heart-rate as a guide. This is suggested because if maximum heart rate coincides with a pace of 6:00 per mile, for example, then certainly 5:50 or any pace faster than 6-minute pace will also elicit maximum heart rate, but is too fast for the purpose of the training session -- optimum result with the least possible stress. No single run, which makes up a series of Intervals, should exceed 5-minutes.

Interval (I) training is demanding, but by no means is it all-out running. In the case of I pace, the harm of going too fast is that no better results are obtained and the excessive pace will probably leave you over stressed for the next quality-training session.

That virtually is all of the training paces that I'll need to worry about for the next few months. I have a few places where I'll be looking to run at 5k or 10k race pace, but I already know that from earlier. (such as hill repeats I want to handle at 5k race pace).

The rest of the spreadsheet that I took a screenshot of are fun little tools that don't necessarily impact my training, but interesting to look at. Such as the affect of hot weather on runs, or even more so the affect that weight has on running time. With my current level of fitness if I weighed 184 instead of 201, which would put me in the "normal" BMI category instead of the overweight one, I would be able to run pretty close to a 25 minute 5k right now and cut an additional 2 minutes off my time.

Obviously increasing a running program while trying to tackle weight loss is a pretty difficult balance. In order to have the energy needed to train properly, you need to make sure to be eating enough and not starving yourself, or you will feel tired or sluggish or unable to finish training. For the past several months now, I've stopped my aggressive weight loss and focused pretty much at 1/2 pound per week which I've been pretty good at keeping for the most part. Perhaps something for next winter to think about though might be another push to drop an extra 10-15 pounds, I don't know...