4 Reasons Your Training Plan Will Fail (and what to do about it)

Finn Melanson [00:00:10]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Milanson, and this is the Run to the Top podcast podcast dedicated to making you a better runner. With each and every episode, we are created and produced by the expert team of coaches@runnersconnect.net, where you can find the best running information on the Internet, as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget that time of year again, when most runners are starting the real meat of their training plan. The summer has started. You've had your first few weeks of building back into a plan, and now the real work begins at Runners Connect. We work with hundreds of runners each season, and one of the big benefits of that is how much data we're able to see every year. We're able to see huge patterns across what type of training runners are doing, when they start training for their race, what types of training and plans they've done in the past, and, of course, what's worked and what hasn't. In today's episode, Coach Jeff is going to talk about the four biggest issues he's seen when looking at this data, and, more importantly, how to make sure you don't succumb to the same mistakes. Hand it over to Coach Jeff. Countless research studies have shown that pillow selection can have a dramatic impact on sleep quality. Lagoon specializes in making pillows designed specifically for runners and athletes to help them optimize their sleep and recovery. We'll talk more about the specific benefits later in the episode, but you can learn more@lagoonsleep.com top and get a 15% discount. Before we get into our conversation, I want to talk to you about your skin. Running in the summer sun is definitely a skin and health hazard, which is why we love Tannery Outdoors Sunscreen. It's made specifically for runners, and it doesn't feel greasy or burn your eyes when you sweat. I'll tell you more about them and how you can save 15% later in the episode.

Jeff Gaudette [00:02:08]: When was the last time you took a look at your training plan? I'm talking about an in depth assessment of your workouts, the volume, the paces, and everything included. Do you understand the why? Why you're running that 800 meters repeat session? Why your tempo run is set to that specific pace? Now, I'd argue that most runners don't need to know the intricate details and science behind their plan. You can make a ton of progress just following along day to day. The problem arises when there's an issue with the plan itself and you're not able to identify what that might be. Unfortunately, when I consult with runners, a lot of the training plans I see them using suffer from a lot of the same mistakes, mainly being tied to a lot of the 1980s physiology and a misunderstanding of the physiological demands of the race distance runners are training for. So today I'm going to outline the most common flaws I see in most training plans. As you listen, I encourage you to have a copy of your training plan open to see if you can spot any of these mistakes in your workouts. So, flaw number one no race specific workouts. In my experience, this is the biggest issue I see when I look across the board at most training plans. This is because it's the easiest to overlook, it's not always apparent to someone without a coaching background, and also the most difficult to actually tailor to the specific athlete. So what are race specific workouts? Well, as the name implies, race specific workouts mean tailoring your workouts to the specific physiological demands of your race distance. Now, this might seem a little obvious. Isn't every workout training you for the demands of the race? Well, not really. The difference between the physiological demands of commonly run distances can be quite different. Certainly, there's going to be some overlap between distances in close proximity, like the five k, eight k, and ten k. But there is a large difference between the specific demands of the marathon and half marathon. Let's take a look at the marathon. For example, the marathon requires you to, one, be efficient at burning fat as a fuel source. Two, conserve carbohydrates while running fast. Three, and training yourself to do all of this while running on very tired legs. Now, let's take a couple of workouts from our popular marathon training program, the Hell Higgin Advanced Program. I'm using this as an example because it's one of the most widely used marathon training plans. According to Google, basically, two out of every three weeks for the entirety of the training plan has you running something like five to 800 meters repeats or five to eight times hill repeats. These workouts are what we call AVO two max workouts workouts where you run at max speed for two to five minutes and then take an equal rest between intervals. This is great for the five k, but not so much for the marathon. As an example, research demonstrates that an increase in Votomax does not increase fuel efficiency, which means you're not working on the first principal marker of marathon performance. Likewise, v o two max intervals don't specifically develop or improve your aerobic threshold. I e your ability to run at marathon pace. Therefore, a workout like six times 800 or six times hill repeats during marathon training has limited benefits to your marathon specific fitness. Now, I'm not saying that you should never run these workouts. It's okay to have a workout like this sprinkled into your plan two or three times over a 16 or 18 week training cycle to kind of help break out the monotony and spice up the legs. I recommend it personally. But when you take a look at your plan, if you have more than two or three of these sessions in your twelve or 16 week plan, you may be in trouble. So how do you fix this? Luckily, this fix is pretty simple. Just swap out some of these workouts that aren't specific to the demands of your race distance. For those that are, I'll go over a few here just so you have some examples, but I'll put a link to the show notes so you can take a look at two or three workouts for each race distance in a five k specific training phase. Your goal should be to improve your speed endurance, your ability to maintain a fast five k pace for the entire race. You're more than capable of running much faster than your current five k pace for 1 mile already. So what you need to actually work on is holding that pace for 3.1 mile. My favorite starting workout for this is something like twelve times 300 meters at five k pace with 100 meters jogging rest. Now, the jogging rest here is important because you're not walking and you're not taking your time. It should take you between about 35 to 40 seconds to jog your rest. Once you get comfortable with this workout, you can run twelve to 16 times 400 or 600 meters at five k pace with 100 meters jogging rest. The ten k is similar to the five k in that you need to hold a relatively fast pace for a certain period of time. However, the pace is slower and you have to hold it for twice as long. Therefore, the ten k specific workouts require longer intervals. So here's one of my favorites five times 1 mile at ten k pace with 45 seconds slow jog rest. Then you're going to hammer one more interval to make six total miles as fast as you can. The half marathon is a test of your ability to quickly clear lactate while running at a pace that is just above comfortable. Moreover, you need to train your legs to endure running hard for 13.1 mile. Here's my favorite half marathon workout three times 3 miles at half marathon pace with 800 meters jogging rest. Jog at a normal easy pace. This is a very difficult session, so you can start with 1 mile slow or reduce the volume to three times 2 miles. I've already discussed the physiological demands of the marathon, so while running hard, long runs are certainly an important part of marathon training. My favorite workout is the two by six mile, which was made famous by runners at the Hansen's Olympic Development Project. You're going to run something like this 1 mile warm up two times 6 miles at ten to 20 seconds faster than your marathon pace with ten minutes rest. The purpose of this workout is to run at your threshold pace for a total of 12 miles, which will help you, one, increase your ability to burn fat as a fuel source when running at marathon pace. Two, practice running on tired legs. And I think that this ten minute rest helps simulate the dead leg feeling that many marathons experience after 18 miles for most runners, not performing race specific workouts is the reason they feel like they are getting fitter and faster in training, yet fail to run their goal time on race day. Their training is getting them fitter, just not for the specific race. Flaw number Two not Enough Easy Miles one of the most common questions I get, especially from newer runners that sign up for one of our custom plans, is how do I run fast if I'm running easy all the time? That's because for most runners, about 80% of your training should be easy miles. These easy runs help target your aerobic system, and aerobic development is one of the true secrets to training, and it's the key to unlocking your potential. Sure, track workouts, votomax sessions and tempo runs will increase your fitness and are still important to running faster. However, nothing will consistently help you improve like developing your aerobic system. But why is this? Well, in short, during any event longer than five k, the aerobic system contributes more than 84% of the energy required to run the race. In that marathon, that number is a whopping 99%. That means to run your best at longer distances from five k to the marathon, you need to fully develop your aerobic system. So how do you develop your aerobic system? Well, with slow, easy runs. And that's why your plan should have lots of them. Now, take a look at your plan. Are you doing the majority of your mileage at easy pace? If not, here's what you should do. The fix isn't quite as easy as swapping out race specific workouts. My recommendation is to remove intense workouts from your week until your ratio is 70% to 80% easy miles to 20% to 30% hard mileage. Add up your total weekly mileage, then add up the amount of mileage that is at easy pace. Divide your total easy mileage by your total overall mileage, and this number is the percent that you're running easy. Now, I know removing hard workouts and fast workouts seems to be a recipe for racing slower, but science proves otherwise. Recent research from Steven Sealer at the University of Norway backs up this methodology, finding that high volume, low intensity training stimulates greater training effects for runners, in particular when using the 80 20 split of easy hard training. This was backed up in 2014 by a studies published in The Frontiers of Physiology, and it found that the concept of polarized training demonstrated the greatest improvements for all runners. For example, after a nine week training plan period, runners using the 80 20 easy hard split had improved their time to exhaustion by a whopping 17.4% and a change in peak speed by 5.1%. If you'd rather not remove workouts from your plan, another option is to add more easy mileage. Now, you're going to be scoffing at me, probably listening to this, thinking that if you add more miles, you're going to end up injured. However, I believe it's a common misconception among runners that increased mileage has a direct correlation to an increase in injuries. I just don't think this is true. Mileage alone does not cause injuries. Intensity, mechanics, strength, and unintelligent engine training are more than likely to cause injury than just running easy. So increase your mileage the smart way, and I think you'll be fine.

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Jeff Gaudette [00:14:33]: Law number Three no ancillary Work Integrated into Your Plan A training plan is more than just the miles you run and the workouts you perform. It should include everything you need to make you a better runner. Ancillary work like strength training and cross training can help keep you healthy and make you a better runner, but not if they're just thrown on top of your training plan without regard for intensity, the phases of your training plan, and your specific weaknesses. For example, the mistake many runners make is performing their strength works on their easy recovery or off days. The thinking behind this idea makes sense. You're the most tired after your hard workouts, so why push yourself even more by adding strength work on these days? But we're forgetting about the recovery aspect and the training plan as a whole. If you were to perform your harder strength workouts, especially anything that involves a lower body on your easy running days, the added stress and shortened total recovery time between your workouts would actually detract from your body's ability to recover. That's why a good strength training plan needs to be tightly integrated into your running plan. Otherwise you might be doing more harm than good. If you're currently working from a plan that does not specifically assign you ancillary work in addition to running miles, my recommendation is to add strength work to your training in the following way your hardest, most running specific strength routine such as leg workouts, pliometrics, things like that should be added after your hardest workouts, your medium effort routines. And I consider these things like basic core hip strength. Things like this should be added on your regular training days and then any preventative routines on your recovery days. I know that's still a little general, but it's difficult to get specific without knowing your experience level or what distance you're training for. If you do want something more specific and created for you, we do have strength training built into directly into our custom training plans. So you get the exact routine with video demonstrations, extractions, et cetera, prescribed on the days that are best meant for you and your training level, your experience level, and what race instances you're training for. And our final mistake is that you're running at the wrong paces. The paces for your workouts should all be assigned to elicit a specific physiological response. Now, that sounds a bit science or jargony, so let me give you an example to explain. In marathon training, you'll be assigned workouts called aerobic threshold runs. Aerobic threshold is defined as the fastest pace that you can run while using the aerobic system as the primary energy pathway. Aerobic threshold is important because it's the pace that is the perfect balance between fat and carbohydrate utilization. The faster your aerobic threshold pace, the faster you can race the marathon without hitting the wall. To target aerobic threshold, you need to run at aerobic threshold pace, which is roughly your current marathon pace. If you run too fast, you'll actually be running a lactate or anaerobic threshold run, a workout that targets a different energy system. Now, the reason most runners and template plans get this wrong is that they base your training off your goal time. For example, you may choose your plan based on something like run a sub four marathon. Or the paces for your plan will be something plug and play, like run a tempo run at 30 seconds faster than goal marathon pace. But your goal marathon pace isn't your current fitness level. If it was, then it really wouldn't be your goal for you. Ideally, it's where you hope your fitness will be on race day. Thus, when you attempt to run your aerobic threshold run, you're set your paces too fast and thus miss the mark. So here's an example. Let's say your goal is to break 345 for the marathon. That's going to be 835 per mile pace. So you base your training off this. But your current fitness is something more like a four hour marathon, which is actually nine nine pace. That means when you're trying to run aerobic threshold runs at 835, you're way, way too fast to target your aerobic threshold property at almost 40 seconds a mile faster than your aerobic threshold. This is more like a high end anaerobic threshold run. Now, sure, this is going to get you fitter overall, but it's not going to help you improve in the marathon. And this could be exactly why you keep getting fitter and maybe even PR in shorter distance, but hit the wall or fall apart during the marathon. In short, when your goal time is off, all your paces are going to be off. That means you'll be running all the wrong efforts and negating the most important benefit of your harder workouts. You're kind of just wasting your time training. So how do you fix this? If your training is based off a goal time or a specific time for the race, stop now and recalculate. Step one establish a baseline. The first thing you need to do is determine what your current fitness level is. If you've run a race recently, you can use time to extrapolate what you could run for a longer or shorter distance. If your goal is the same distance again, then no calculations are needed. We can simply use this as your data point for step two. So step two factor in your likely rate of improvement. If you've been running less than a year and improving with each race, you can expect about a six to 8% improvement in performance over the course of your training. As an example, if your data point shows that you're in 430 shape for the marathon, you'd be looking at a goal time around four or eight or 413. If you've been running for more than a year, but you're still Prring in most distances and increasing commitment to training, you can expect a four to 6% improvements to your performance. If you're more experienced and have been training for many years, then you should expect a two to 4% improvement in performance. This is the goal time you can now use to set your training plan places. If you're interested, we do have a free improvement performance calculator that'll do this all for you, so I'll link it up in the show notes. Now step three adjust and adapt. After three to four weeks, if you think you've gotten fitter or you want to measure your rate of improvement to determine if you're making progress towards your ultimate goal, run another race. Try to keep the race as integrated with your training as possible. For example, you can run the race in place of a hard workout so you don't impact your long term fitness. If you improve, you can now update your goal paces in your training plan, knowing that you're still on the targeted correct effort levels. This is the step by step formula you can use to ensure that you're always running at your own paces. Now, I hope this was a great guide to help you better understand your current plan you're using and to help tweak it to better suit some of the challenges I know many of runners face when it comes to training in race day. If you're interested in getting something more custom to you, we do have training plans available with coaching at an affordable cost. Whether you're a Masters runner tired of working with template schedules that don't take into account that you're not 25 years old anymore, or if you're a beginner who's always trying generic schedules that are too difficult, we can write a plan that's unique for you. We analyze data from 30 different questions to help craft a schedule suited to your training's history, strengths and weaknesses. Your plan includes the exact mileage or kilometers you need to run each day and assigns you specific paces based on your fitness level. Plus, you have access to our team of coaches to help you adjust your plan when needed, provide feedback or advice after workouts, and to help you stay on track. We'll even give you a 14 day trial to check it out. Just head to RunnersConnect Net Train and sign up and we'll get to work on your plan. So I hope you really enjoyed this episode today. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you later.

Finn Melanson [00:22:15]: Thanks for listening to the Run to the Top podcast. I'm your host. Finn milanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch, Finn and the rest of our team at Runners Connect also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple Podcast players. Lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests and premier access to contests and giveaways, subscribe to our newsletter by going to RunnersConnect. Net podcast. Until next time, happy trading.