Structuring your running season

pconn062

This is a topic I have been thinking about lately and I'd like to hear some people's experience. I'm thinking about people who run a more traditional season with a track season and a cross country season, rather than marathoners who usually build towards one race (that's if there are any people on this forum anymore that aren't marathoners!! :pac:).

So a few questions, how do you structure your season?
How do you decide when to end your track/cross season (ie, do you run a full season or cut it short to give the body a break/start preparing for the next season)?
Do you try to peak for a specific race?
How long until you start planning for the track/cross country season after you finish the other?
Do you do base work before beginning your track/cross specific season?
Do you take some time off completely after a specific season?

I know a lot of people, particularly people who run road races, now try to stay in race shape all years round but I've recently been questioning the logic of this as it's virtually impossible to do. This is the first year that I am actually planning my whole season out and am now in a base building phase before the cross season starts in about two months. Long term I will be trying to figure out then when to call the cross season off and start thinking about the track season and what it an appropriate time to do that?

Anyone have any experiences?

ThePiedPiper

My general approach, although obviously as a marathoner, is based on Lydiard's principle that you can have two peaks in a year, each lasting 4-6 weeks. In that peak phase, I would try to have 2 goal races, although it can obviously be more than that if the race distances are shorter.

The first phase in any cycle is base building, then a sharpening phase of maybe 6 weeks before the peaking phase. Its irrelevant what the goal race distance is, or even the sport.

Staying race fit all year round isn't really possible, you can race all year but you have to ease off the intensity or you'll peak at the wrong time. Just watch how the likes of the kilkenny hurlers always peak at the exact right time or the better Kerry and Tyrone teams of the last decade. The same is true in athletics.

Hopefully some non marathoner will back me up!:-]

pconn062

RunForestRun wrote: »

My general approach, although obviously as a marathoner, is based on Lydiard's principle that you can have two peaks in a year, each lasting 4-6 weeks. In that peak phase, I would try to have 2 goal races, although it can obviously be more than that if the race distances are shorter.

The first phase in any cycle is base building, then a sharpening phase of maybe 6 weeks before the peaking phase. Its irrelevant what the goal race distance is, or even the sport.

Staying race fit all year round isn't really possible, you can race all year but you have to ease off the intensity or you'll peak at the wrong time. Just watch how the likes of the kilkenny hurlers always peak at the exact right time or the better Kerry and Tyrone teams of the last decade. The same is true in athletics.

Hopefully some non marathoner will back me up!:-]

Interesting, I'm wondering does the base building phase have less importance after a big race (or season) for a marathoner than for a track runner? Surely a marathoner would have a large base built already from the marathon training? This is probably why Canova advocates speed work right after a marathon for his runners, as the base is already established and re-touching speed is the issue.

I realise I'm actually going off topic in my own thread!

The base building phase is of the most interest to me, I've never really done it as a specific phase before and am wondering how much time to put aside for it before starting specific work.

ecoli

I normally attempted to

Break Usually comes mid august.The reason for this was simple. It was when my track seasons usually came to an end (either after the last graded meet early august or sometimes pushed a little further if needed for National Leagues final dependent on whether the club made it through). Normally this was 2-3 weeks break however I always found that I was very sluggish coming back from this and was often chasing fitness for too long. Alot of the Americans tend to follow a different recover pattern of 1 week completely off, 1 week of light cross training or running (couple of recovery miles every 2-3 days) and the third week starting very low.

Base building The next 4-6 weeks would be building aerobic base however people often just see this as miles. I would still try to include sessions here however these would be mainly tempo's, hills and rhythm running style sessions (high volume low recovery at moderate pace). There is no problem with adding sessions but you just have to focus on not hammering things just yet. This approach is used by many american college runners over the summer to pre empt college training beginning

XC Season This is the focus on quality sessions specific to races you want to run normally 8-10 weeks. We always aimed to have our season run till early December to normally coincide with All Irelands. After this there was a few weeks of easy running over the X mas period as a natural break between the seasons

Indoor or RR Jan usually came a split of focus either those who opted for indoors or like me went for the strength option and focused on road races Sessions started back up and were progressive depending on targets. Normally raced through here till March where an easy week was taking before transitioning into Track season at the start of may with the focus being on peaking around late June and trying to maintain for 2-3 weeks normally around championship races. A few post championships races just to wrap up the season and the cycle began all over again


Regarding Canova be careful reading too much into this as people tend to forget that he is dealing with athletes who have spent years maxing out their aerobic endurance before going through the rigours of his training. He does begin the global phase with emphasis on turnover and speed before turning to race specific (i.e marathon) however until the specific phase most of his athletes train like marathoners anyway

Similarly Daniels has a base building phase before turning to turnover in phase one and then onto specific phases 2-4

Joe Rubios middle distance guide actually provides a general guide to a season lay out for a 1500m runner which might be of use to you also

dna_leri

The last few years I have planned a two peak season - for indoors in Jan/Feb and outdoor track in July/Aug. I don't run a whole lot of races each season but I am ready for a break by the end. This year I am trying to peak for the National Masters (mid-Aug) but I am already thinking and planning for the next season.

At the end of the season, I don't take a complete break but the first couple of weeks will be easy running only, then build up a base from there, taking up to 10 weeks. The next phase (mesocycle?), I will focus on something that I want to improve on, maybe speed development, hills, etc. I try not to have a strict transition between phases - do 1 session from the next phase before I finish the current one, so I don't shock the body too much. I try to maintain both endurance and speed through all phases so I don't have to go back to zero each time but there is some fallback and rebuild each time.

In terms of planning, I have an outline plan for 6-12 months ahead, usually working back from a target race, that gets more detailed as I get closer. I have to be careful not to make my competitive season too long - it would be possible to race track from April to August but it's not possible to be at peak for that long, so it's about pacing myself.

This year looks something like this:
Wk01-09 - Indoor competition
Wk10-19 - Base build, finishing with 5K road race.
Wk20-24 - Speed development, finishing with 800m race
Wk25-33 - Outdoor competition, finishing with National Masters
Wk34-43 - Base build, maybe include some road races
Wk44-52 - Strength development?

pconn062

ecoli wrote: »

Regarding Canova be careful reading too much into this as people tend to forget that he is dealing with athletes who have spent years maxing out their aerobic endurance before going through the rigours of his training. He does begin the global phase with emphasis on turnover and speed before turning to race specific (i.e marathon) however until the specific phase most of his athletes train like marathoners anyway

Similarly Daniels has a base building phase before turning to turnover in phase one and then onto specific phases 2-4

Joe Rubios middle distance guide actually provides a general guide to a season lay out for a 1500m runner which might be of use to you also

Great stuff ecoli, I always wondered how someone got the right balance between cross and track as the cross country season can run right up until March if you include the BHAA races, and it's about knowing where to stop. Regarding the Canova stuff, that was just a comment on base building from an elite marathoners point of view, not something I have to worry about!

With regards to base building, I will be including 2 weekly workouts, either hills, tempo of fartlek as well as generally increasing the mileage to my highest ever peak, 60+ as I feel I have a pretty poor aerobic capacity once I go over 3000m.

That's interesting that you end your cross season in December as we would generally keep it going until February as we have the Rás na hEireann which is usually in February. My coach wants me to run an indoor season next year which I've never done before so that's why I'm struggling to figure out the overall structure of my year as it will mean cutting the cross season short.

ecoli

pconn062 wrote: »

That's interesting that you end your cross season in December as we would generally keep it going until February as we have the Rás na hEireann which is usually in February. My coach wants me to run an indoor season next year which I've never done before so that's why I'm struggling to figure out the overall structure of my year as it will mean cutting the cross season short.

There is the option for people in this country to go right through the winter with BHAA races, Rás and Inter Clubs. Normally I ended up running the Interclubs to make up a team off my road running training however it was never pretty but it was more an obligation than a target race.

Check out Smoores training log from last year or the year before as he managed to get a fairly good XC season which included the BHAA XC series and stretched right through

Personally I think the sport is moving away from the traditional peaks and are starting to think you can remain in good shape year round as long as the focus does change. General fundamental running fitness can attribute to good performances across the board (Look at Mo running HM early in the year) the issue for non professional athletes though is trying to maintain mental freshness moreso than physical and it is very hard to sustain continual training/ racing at a particular distance which is why should look to breaking the training down and putting in schedule down times. We always seem to find ourselves itching to get back to hard training when on a down time or break so if we careful position them in long term plan it can help maintain the motivation

smmoore79

My training wouldnt aim for peaking at any given time. I would consistantly train year round(with the exception of taking a 2/3 week holiday where Id still easy run). So far I havent been injured and through training week in week out Ive had some jumps in speed and fitness. Broadly speaking my training over a year would go as follows;

Oct to Mar - Cross country season (great for strength leading into road racing)

Training would involve still doing tuesday track, but also hill reps on Saturdays on grass

Apr to Sep - Road running (with some track). Here i try to get into as many road races as possible. Its the best way to improve as nothing replicates racing. Also Id still be hitting Tuesday track , but Saturday hills would be replaced by long reps ranging from amile to 2 miles.

This year Im aiming for the National half so my LSR's have increased recently to 2 hours and my Saturday reps have gotten longer but slightly slower at HM pace. Depending on how the race goes, i may decide to give the marathon a bash this year and reduce the cross country(Im not eligible for the Novice or Intermediates this year; just Seniors)

Timmaay

I'd structure myself fairly similar to ecoli usually, with an XC and Track seasons. Total break in August for a week or so, build up a base in Sept/Oct, with a good few XC or road races thrown in during Oct/Nov, usually back off abit around christmas in terms of races (but keep up the long Sunday runs), If I do indoors (which I rarely do, too short a season, and work is busy that time of year), I'll start off training for the short stuff in Jan, but usually I try just to slowly introduce the speedwork during feb/march, keep up the miles/long sunday runs also, and hit the start of the outdoor season with a bang. Usually aim for an early enough peak, bag a pb or so if I can then (worked nicely this year!), then for may/early June back off with the races and aim for a big peak again for late June/July, I'll happily just do as many races as I can during this period, 2/3 races a week if they are on, once I feel fully recovered after each race! The milage/long sunday runs go totally out the window this time of year (down to maybe 5/10miles a wk, but all races/sessions!), but once I have kept up the base in the early part of the year, I can get away with no miles now!

Might not be the best way of approaching it ha (overall I'd say my weekly miles on average is very low for a 1500m runner, maybe 20mpw!), but it works for me, it fits in around work fairly well, and with training in the local club, I've had almost no running injuries, and then most of all I've bagged a decent few track PBs over the last few years!

pconn062

smmoore79 wrote: »

My training wouldnt aim for peaking at any given time. I would consistantly train year round(with the exception of taking a 2/3 week holiday where Id still easy run). So far I havent been injured and through training week in week out Ive had some jumps in speed and fitness. Broadly speaking my training over a year would go as follows;

Oct to Mar - Cross country season (great for strength leading into road racing)

Training would involve still doing tuesday track, but also hill reps on Saturdays on grass

Apr to Sep - Road running (with some track). Here i try to get into as many road races as possible. Its the best way to improve as nothing replicates racing. Also Id still be hitting Tuesday track , but Saturday hills would be replaced by long reps ranging from amile to 2 miles.

This year Im aiming for the National half so my LSR's have increased recently to 2 hours and my Saturday reps have gotten longer but slightly slower at HM pace. Depending on how the race goes, i may decide to give the marathon a bash this year and reduce the cross country(Im not eligible for the Novice or Intermediates this year; just Seniors)

This is really interesting to me, so you basically do two sessions a week all year round and just alter them depending on the race you are aiming for? I was doing this but felt it was leaving me a little burnt out and the sessions weren't translating into good times in races, I think I didn't have enough of an aerobic base built up for the sessions to be completely effective and I was always suffering and falling off the pace at the end of races. So that's why I'm trying to structure it differently so I have two specific base building phases a year where I only do easy running and some light sessions.

smmoore79

pconn062 wrote: »

This is really interesting to me, so you basically do two sessions a week all year round and just alter them depending on the race you are aiming for? I was doing this but felt it was leaving me a little burnt out and the sessions weren't translating into good times in races, I think I didn't have enough of an aerobic base built up for the sessions to be completely effective and I was always suffering and falling off the pace at the end of races. So that's why I'm trying to structure it differently so I have two specific base building phases a year where I only do easy running and some light sessions.

yeah, 2 hard sessions and a long run which id consider hard aswell. in xc season id just change the saturday intervals to hill training. 4 x 1 mile with the mile being hilly with a long flat stretch at the end for speed. xc needs a lot of strength so hilly reps are ideal for this.