Summer phase training summary

[Coyote Mas Loco]

I was curious at how my summer training looked in sum, so last week I made a little spreadsheet to add things up, going from June 1 through August 31.

Ran 809 miles

87.7% - distance, easy aerobic, recovery
6.3% - tempos and threshold, from marathon pace workouts to anaerobic threshold
1.7% - V02 max (mostly 3K to 5K effort, but I also included 10K pace because it's close enough)
2.6% - races (two 10Ks and a half marathon)
1.7% - speed work, including mile pace and under

I think the rule of thumb is to do 80/20, as in 80% easier aerobic and 20% harder effort and I think that's well and good for sub-masters runners, but have found with masters running it's wise to back off the faster stuff a bit and leave it for race day. With this next cycle (October 1 to mid-December) my focus will be cross country, so I'll might be doing a bit more V02 max and speed. So more like 85%, and 3% V02 max, 2-3% speed.

[Coyote Mas Loco]

To that summary into context, I break my week's down into long run, two recovery runs, a tempo day and an interveral/speed day.

So a typical week might go as follows:

M - recovery 40-60 minutes easy
T - Tempo with warm up and cool down and 4X 15-30 sec pick ups before and after
W - medium long 60-80 minutes or a double of two short runs
Th - Intervals at V02 max effort or shorter faster reps, usually mile pace or under, sometimes add a second short run
F - recovery of 40-60 minutes easy
Sa - 70-80 minutes steady with 6-10X pick ups
Su - long run 1:40 to 2:10

[Belgian Lace]

I had Big Plans to build distance over the summer, but Other Things got in the way and I had much less running time than I'd expected.

So I finally stopped fooling around and started focusing on speed and hills.   Early race returns are promising, and I'm pleased with the way things turned out.  I've got at least one race a month until the end of the year, and I'm excited that two of them are are on trails.

[Coyote Mas Loco]

I had Big Plans to build distance over the summer, but Other Things got in the way and I had much less running time than I'd expected.

So I finally stopped fooling around and started focusing on speed and hills.   Early race returns are promising, and I'm pleased with the way things turned out.  I've got at least one race a month until the end of the year, and I'm excited that two of them are are on trails.

Great to hear that. I like trail runs, but after my fall last year I haven't raced on the trails and not sure if I will unless it's pretty smooth. That hurt to too much to repeat and the rehab/recovery took 6 months.