OK, I am now excited!
I spent the last few days reading, re-reading, and then reading again the
"How I write a custom training plan" thread. I admit, I am nowhere near fluent in this, and now I have a true appreciation for the effort and detail
@DopeyBadger puts into the custom plans. ...Simply amazing...
With the little nudge in the right direction last week after I posted that terrible plan I came up with, I believe I am now more in line with a plan that will hopefully get me ready for Dopey and keep me away from the over-training I have been doing for the past 21 weeks.
I will describe and comment along the way and please let me know if you think I have made an error or feel I should tweak the plan.
Paces:
The first rabbit hole I went down was the equivalency/ pacing calculations. I read through several threads and articles and tried to figure out which method was being used for the paces posted earlier in this thread. Was it McMillan or Rigel or something else entirely? I settled in on Rigel. I then built a spreadsheet using the T2 = T1 x (D2/D1)^r formula. I populated the various distances and had a table that appears to match the results above pretty closely by using that 5k run I was happy with as the basis for all the numbers. There were some of the values that did not line up, so I just typed in the values for EA, EB, LR, and Lactate. For giggles, I plugged in distances until I could get the Recovery pace provided. It worked out to and equivalent distance of 1,590.71 miles.
Here are my tables:
The values above are used as look up values for the rest of the training plan I built. That way, if I make a change to my 5k pace, it will flow through the training plan without me having to tweak a million fields. In addition to the standard pace values, I added the +/- 3% columns for the range I should stay in for each of the runs.
Intervals:
Before this week I was afraid of doing anything besides a standard run. Pointing me in this direction opened my eyes to what I should be doing. I took the recommended 8 intervals above and put them into a table.
These are also used as a lookup in the training plan. I added some field to the end of the table to estimate the range for time and distance for each interval.
Why did I make this a lookup table as well? Well, I was reading the
"How I write a custom training plan" and came cross a comment in the Q&A section that made me laugh..."
I don't have someone run "mile PR" pace for 120 seconds because that's a killer workout."
...Wait a minute...that is what Billy is having me do this week and next week with interval 1! I am running faster than mile pace for 1:54!
The plan:
Followed the pattern outlined:
- Days off will be Mondays and Wednesdays...will have 5 days per week of running.
- Populated Dopey week.
- Followed the pattern from taper back three weeks for the Saturday and Sunday runs: 60+60 min, 90+90 min, 90+150 min, 90+90 min, 90+150 min, 90+90 min, 90+140 min, 90+90 min, 90+130 min, 90+90 min,... all the way back to week one (90+70 min). The Sundays will alternate between LR and EB and the Saturdays will alternate between EB and EA.
- I put in a column called "Wk Time 30%" so I could calculate what the weekly time on the road I should shoot for. This is calculated by saying that the Sunday run is the LR and the LR is 30% of all weekly time on the road.
- I then calculate 80% of the time on road for EA/EB/LR and 20% for hard runs (M Tempo and Intervals)
- I then populate Thursday as the remaining easy run with an Easy A run. The pace is populated by a lookup formula and the time is calculated as 80% easy time minus Sunday time minus Saturday time. (As Saturday and Sunday are considered always easy/lr runs).
- I then put in the 8 tempo runs on Tuesdays starting from week one. I repeat the intervals once I get through all of them.
- I use the entire interval time (including warm up) as a hard run. The values are populated from the intervals table lookup.
- I take the 20% hard runs time calculated minus the Tuesday interval time to get a M Tempo time for Friday. Some of the Friday's at the beginning of the program did not work out well. They were too short. Therefore I am considering dropping the ones that are under 20 minutes. That will give me an extra day of rest for a couple of weeks. The other option is to just increase the Tempo run to 30 minutes and call it a day.
Here is the table:
I have added extra rows and calculations to fill in actual values after I do the runs. That way I can see how closely I am following the recommendations.
I also had to bump up two of my Saturday EB runs to 1:40:00 because without that, the EA on Thursday would have been more than 2:30:00.
Concerns:
- Will maxing out at 8:20:00 and an estimated 46.26 miles be enough per week?
- Will not going longer than an estimated 14 miles in any run be long enough to get me through a marathon on Sunday? (I know...I read that the back to back days are simulating the back half of the marathon, but for a Dopey, are they simulating the back half of a 48.6?)
- Should I stick to the same 8 intervals 2.5 times or should I change it up after I get through the first set?
Let me know your thoughts and if I am back on track. Any suggestions and comments are welcome.