Running skills
Training plans: WTF?
If you’re signing up to your first race, you might be thinking about getting yourself a training plan. But many plans can be intimidating, stuffed with jargon and acronyms. This is your simple guide to understanding plans and using them to help you run better
Words: Anna Harding
There are lots of reasons why you might be considering following a training plan for your running. Maybe you’re a complete beginner and don’t know where to start. Maybe you’re coming back from injury or a long period away from running and want a bit of structure to help your return. Maybe you’ve booked yourself in to run a race of a certain distance that you want to train for.
Or maybe your running progress has plateaued and you’re looking to push yourself a little bit further.
A good plan should include runs that are varied in length and intensity, in order to provide different training stimuli for your body to adapt to, and it also needs to include rest days. And when following a running training plan, you have to be patient; it may take a few weeks of consistent training before you start to notice a difference in your running.
Trusting the plan
Following a training plan when you’re aiming for a certain running goal, such as a specific time or a particular race distance, takes away a lot of the guesswork. When you have all of your runs planned out for you, it’s a lot easier to tick them off and see progress with your running.
Following a set plan can also help avoid the risk of over or undertraining. It can be really tempting as a runner, when things are going right and you’re feeling strong, to overdo it and push yourself too hard, and that can lead to overtraining and increased risk of getting injured.
By following a plan, you can be sure that you’re doing enough to help you reach your goal, without overdoing it.
When will it ever end?!
The duration of a training plan depends on a couple of variables: where you are with your running at the outset and the distance of the race for which you’re training.
|| By following a plan, you can be sure that you’re doing enough to help you reach your goal, without overdoing it||
Someone who is regularly running three times a week and can comfortably run 10K will probably only need around 12 to 16 weeks to train to run a full marathon. If you are new to running and fancy tackling a marathon, it’s wise to give yourself three months of what’s called ‘base-building’ to get yourself in a position to be able to then take on that 12-to 16-week training programme.