Dropping into a training program.
What to consider when you are cutting it short.
Recently I tried to crash a marathon training plan because I only had 7 weeks to my event. This turned out to be a bad idea because I didn’t have the fitness necessary to handle the load and intensity. But there are times when it’s perfectly ok to crash a training plan.
The most common is when you have back to back events separated by a few weeks. What are you going to do in the intervening time? There isn’t enough time to start a training plan from week 1, but there’s too much time to just do maintenance miles.
This is when you have to know how to drop into the middle of a training plan.
Let’s say for instance that you just finished a 16 week advanced training plan. You made it successfully to the end and tapered. You ran your event. Now you have another event in 6 weeks. What should you do?
In this scenario, depending on how badly you trashed yourself in the target event, you’ll want to take a week or two off. Taking it off means some combination of rest, cross-training and light running.
Then you want to back schedule from your event and see where that would put you in the training plan.
For Example; if you have an event in 6 weeks and you are taking a one week rest then you need to back-schedule by 5 weeks. If you assume the same 16 week plan you used before, then you are starting with week 11. Then just execute the plan as you normally would, starting with week 11.
As a general rule if you think you are already in race shape then you want to start training somewhere in the week 9-10 part of your training plan. That’s what most coaches will recommend.
It is possible to crash a training plan when you are not in race shape. You can try to do this, like I did, but you need to be indestructible. Really indestructible. If you are not in race shape and drop into week 10 of an advanced training plan one of three things can happen.
First, there is a slim chance that you will survive the stress and your body will bounce back in time to carry some fitness into you r event – let’s call that the ‘happily ever after’ scenario. Unfortunately it’s more likely that you will either injure yourself or burn your body out with over training.
If you’re going to try this you will need to keep a close eye on your machine so you can bail out when it starts to crash and burn. You’ll also need to still schedule in a decent taper before the race. If you do somehow survive the abbreviated training you’ll need to recover before the event.
In my case I had 7 weeks before the event. I dropped into week 9-10. This meant going from zero miles to 30-40 miles a week. This meant going form no workouts to 3 hard workouts a week. A tempo step up run of 12 miles, a track workout of 10 X 800 at race pace minus 1:20 and a long run with surges.
My body didn’t hold up and I had to bail out but I’ll still take some of that fitness I did build with the abbreviated plan into my event.
Yes, it is possible to shortcut a training plan, especially if you are already in race fitness. You can crash any plan by jumping into the middle of it – but caveat emptor. We reap what we sow.