Perhaps the most common mistake runners make when writing their own training plans is trying to change or add in too many variables at once. This leads to overtraining and not being able to identify what is (and isn’t) working.
When it comes to writing your training schedule or adjusting your plan to take your training to the next level, there are 3 main variables to take into account: frequency, duration, and intensity.
In this episode we’ll discuss…
- What frequency, duration, and intensity mean and why they are important
- Show you ways you can alter each to positively impact your training
- Why trying to change more than one at a time is often a recipe for disaster
- And how to combine all 3 variables to take your next training block to the next level.
This is a must listen if you’ve plateaued in your progress or keep hitting injury or overtraining ruts when training for races.
How I Design Training Plans
When I design a training plan for an endurance athlete, I consider three basic components. Each of these variables is essential to your fitness as a runner, but the trick is to only change them one at a time.
Just like in a good science experiment, you want to control as many variables as possible so you know what is working and what isn’t. And the other reason that you only want to change one at a time is because your body can only handle so much at once.
I like to think of these variables as levers. When an athlete is ready for a change, I’ll pull on one at a time.
Those three levers are frequency, duration, and intensity.
I’m going to go over them one by one and explain some common scenarios of when and why you would want to pull on each lever and when you’ll want to leave them alone.
Running Frequency
This is as simple as how often you run.
If you only run one day a week, adding a second day can make a dramatic difference in your running.
But if you run 6 or seven days a week already, adding in another run is going to have a smaller positive impact on your running and might in fact, be too much.
Why is increasing your frequency important?
Well, because every time you run, you are stimulating your metabolism and your aerobic system. You are subjecting your body’s systems to the impact forces of a run more frequently so that they build up stronger, provided you give them enough time to recover.
You are also increasing the power of habit.
If you run every day at 6am, that becomes an almost unconscious habit, just like brushing your teeth, so you are far more likely to stick to your running habit than someone who only runs once or twice a week.
So what’s the best way to increase your frequency?
Well, if you are running 3 miles once a week, you should not simply add on another 3 mile day. That would be doubling the amount of miles you run in a week.
Start by trimming your normal run to 1.5 to 2 miles and then add a second day of 1.5 to two miles.
That way, you are not increasing your mileage much or at all, but you are simply increasing your frequency.
Once you do that for a few weeks and all goes well, you can add another day, using the same formula, without increasing total weekly mileage.
Or you can choose to pull another lever.
Frequency is the lever that should always be pulled first when you are starting out as a runner.
You don’t want to go from the couch directly to a speed day at the track or a 20 mile run. Getting used to running nice and easy more often is the best way to safely build up your running fitness.
Where people get in trouble with frequency is when they add too many running days and neglect off days.
Many people think more days of running is better and it can be up to a point. But even at a slow pace, running is by definition a high-impact sport, and if your bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments aren’t toughened up for the pounding, you could be heading right back for the couch.
One way to build your aerobic fitness faster while your body gets used to all the running you are doing is to cross train with a low-impact or no-impact aerobic activity like swimming, aquajogging, or biking.
This is a great way to stay active, recover from your runs, and build your legs and lungs for your next run.
Many advanced runners and master’s runners have discovered that for them, cross training is a key part of being a healthy runner. They run less, but stay injury free and aerobically fit.
Duration
This is how long you run. This is measured in both the distance of each individual run and in the number of miles you run per week.
So perhaps this lever is really two levers in one. It’s a very different experience to run 3 miles, three days a week with a 20 mile long run on day 4 versus 29 miles spread evenly across those four days, right?
Let’s get into how you can pull on the duration lever in a smart way.
Aerobic development happens best at a slow, relaxed pace in the range of 30-90 minutes or so.
So your goal at first should be to get into the 30-90 minute range for all your runs. Once you get there and are comfortable with the frequency you run, you can start to build the duration of your long run.
Many running experts suggest that your long run should ideally be no longer than 20-30% of your weekly mileage. So that means if you run 30 miles per week, your long run is between 6 and 9 miles.
Now for marathoners, that is not enough weekly mileage or long run distance to prepare well, but marathon training will have more than just duration at play. But this will give you a good start if you are aiming for shorter distances or if you’d like to work up to training for the marathon.
The idea is to have a balance so that your body gets used to longer running. You don’t want your long runs to be so long that you aren’t prepared for them, yet you do want them to be distinctive from the other shorter runs you do in the week so that you can learn to adapt to longer and longer runs once a week.
When it comes to your weekly mileage, you might hear the rule of thumb that you should only increase about 10% a week. That can be helpful when you are just starting out, but as you progress to bigger weekly mileage, those numbers get much too high too fast.
A better way to increase your mileage safely is to increase a little bit each week for three weeks and then have a down week where you go back to where you started at week one.
This allows for better adaptation of the mileage because it literally gives you a break and allows time to get comfy with the miles instead of always trying to build and build and build.
You should feel a big difference during that down week and you might learn that your rate of increase was too aggressive. If that’s the case, consider a smaller increase the following week.
On the other hand, if you are feeling fresh and poppy that down week, that’s a pretty good indication that you are doing everything right.
Intensity
This is the lever that we want to use most sparingly. A little goes a long way and too much can lead to disaster.
What we see most often as running coaches is that new or intermediate runners run too fast most of the time. When you are out of breath on a run, that is not an easy run. Yes, your breathing and heart rate will increase while running easy, but you should be able to talk to a running buddy or sing to the music in your ears.
The problem with running at this medium pace all the time is that you are getting out of the aerobic zone, meaning you are not working the primary system for endurance. You are also stealing speed from your designated speed days, so when you show up to finally try to run fast, you are not recovered enough to do it to your potential.
The concept of polarized training is what we are aiming for. That means 80% of your running is at a super relaxed conversational pace and only 20% gets you out of breath.
As a beginner, 20% speed work is probably going to be a bit too much, but you don’t have to completely ignore speed until you’ve built up your aerobic base. My favorite way to introduce speed is with strides. Strides are short, 20 second bursts of speed that you add on after an easy run. We did an entire episode on strides a few months back, so if you’d like to learn more about their amazing power, be sure to check that one out.
There are about as many speed workouts as there are running shoes so I’m not going to go into the details of all of them today. But to oversimplify things, the goal with speed workouts is to run fast for a certain distance and then either stop, walk, or jog to recover and then repeat.
What the rest breaks do is allow your body to run longer at much faster paces than you can all at once. Over time, and with proper recovery, you will be able to stretch out those faster paces longer and longer.
Some speed workouts are designed to work on your highest gear and those are called VO2 max or anaerobic training. You will not be able to run very long at these tough paces and they require full rest breaks in order for you to be able to repeat them. These kinds of workouts help sharpen up your speed at all levels and improve your running economy, making all your runs feel a little easier.
Other speed days are designed to build your stamina which is speed plus endurance. This would be like your classic tempo run, fartlek, or even a 5k workout where you keep jogging during the rests.
And finally, there is a way to bump up the intensity without running fast at all and that is hill work. You can choose a hill repeat workout or you can incorporate hills into a slower run. Either way, you are stressing the legs and the lungs whenever you fight gravity, just like a speed session on flats.
The funny thing about speed days is that you don’t want to run these too fast either. Yes, you want to work hard and challenge yourself, but it should never be a 100% effort and rarely even 90%. There should always be a little reserve left in the tank at the end of the session. This helps prevent injury but it also teaches you speed control.
After all, speed is not very useful if you can’t control it.
Each time you pull on one of the levers, you want to be sure that you are allowing enough time for your body to adapt to the change before you pull on another one. That could be a couple weeks or even a couple of months, depending on your running fitness to start out with.
Improving as a runner is an incredibly rewarding experience. When you put in the time, the effort, and the care to plan your runs in a smart way, you not only will get closer and closer to reaching your potential, but you will be on your way to being a runner for life.
If you have patience and only pull one of the three levers at a time, you can build a smart plan to improve and stay injury free as long as possible.
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