What's going to happen to me after I do this?

You don't need to go as high as 50's i would say, stick to the 40's range and see what happens. Also, schedule a down week or two in the middle of your progression where you run reduced mileage to give your body a break from the stresses upping the volume introduces

Right away, you seem to be going from 30-something mpw to steadily ramp up to 50+? You'll either burn out or get injured. What are your goals? It doesn't seem to be getting faster.

Also, you need some variation in your high intensity. What are you doing for injury prevention?

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Right away, you seem to be going from 30-something mpw to steadily ramp up to 50+? You'll either burn out or get injured. What are your goals? It doesn't seem to be getting faster.

Also, you need some variation in your high intensity. What are you doing for injury prevention?

He might not get injured and not burn out. He might just get better, especially if he takes his easy days easy and jogs super slow on recovery days.

+ Your gradual mileage increase is good, but holding at 45 for 3-4 weeks and getting to feel confident at that level before adding more might be a good idea.

+ I like simplicity in training plans, and yours is very straightforward.

+ Tempos are great for base building, but your tempos are too long for track or even for XC. Unless you're running a HM or marathon, you really don't need more than 20 minutes. Maybe 4 miles, but not 5 or 8. Stick with 3-4 and let the pace get faster as your fitness improves.

+ Your interval sessions are too long. Instead of doing 20 x 400, right now you should be doing more like 4-6 x 400 at closer to mile pace. Or 200s, or 300s, or 800s. It's the time of year to work on running fast.

+ Speaking of which, for base building for track, you should be thinking about speed development and progression. Think about building up short hill sprints, transitioning to short flat sprints, and then to 150 or 200 meters with long rests.

If you stick to your plan exactly as written, I think you'll burn out or get injured before your first race. But if you adjust it just a bit to make the workouts less intense and more realistic, I think you'll get to the beginning of track season practices and be ready to roll.

Had to miss a week of training because there was ice all over the ground and my treadmill was broken. I eventually figured out how to fix it, but by that point all the ice and most of my training week was gone. I've just been doing some 6mi runs for the last few days.

I looked at the plan and it seems like I should be done right before the outdoor season starts. If not, I'll probably skip Week 13. Since the treadmill is back, I luckily shouldn't have any more setbacks for the rest of Winter.

By the way, thanks for the critique. For injury prevention, I'm doing squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses. And as mentioned before, If I feel like the mileage is starting to burn me out (lack of motivation), I'll stop increasing. And if the 400 x 20s start to feel excessive, I'll replace them.

I'm trying not to obsess over the specifics, because I know that if I simply get leaner and run more miles, I should become faster.

If you were at 35 during xc I wouldn't go above 45 this winter. 40 would be better. Replace the 400s with 10x200 @ mile pace with 2-3 min rest every other week and 6x50 hill sprints every other week. Or a fartlek occasionally.

The problem with building up like you're proposing is that your body probably won't recover from the stimulus. So you'll be doing a great job of adding stress but a bad job of adapting. You'll end up slower in track than you are now. Better to keep things under control, have a decent track season, and go into the summer faster and with a full year of training behind you.

I'm ending Week 3 tomorrow, but I ran into a bit of a mid-week scare. I couldn't go to the track for the 400 x 20s, so I decided to basically race the 5 miles. The day after, I felt quite a bit of patellar tendinitis in my right knee despite having no problems the weeks before.

I decided to run 5 miles instead of the 10 mile run on Sunday to see if it was just a one-day thing. It didn't improve, so I moved my rest day to Monday, and did some squats on a slant board, gradually adding up some weight. I did 5 miles today, and luckily my knee feels a lot better. Will proceed with 10 miles tomorrow.

Interestingly, I found a study that said patellar tendinitis had a link to limited dorsiflexion range in basketball players (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21917610). I did a lot of martial arts as a child, which would probably be bad for my dorsiflexion range. In order to kick, a lot of plantar flexion range is needed so you wouldn't hit something with your toe. I was trying to come up with an instance in which you would need dorsiflexion, and then I realized that I couldn't. Because of this, it's quite possible that I don't have enough dorsiflexion range. I'm going to start doing some exercises for dorsiflexion both pre and post run to see if it helps at all.

Ended up getting sick for winter break.

I really wanted to train, but I had a terrible experience running while sick last time (I got a mucus-y cough that took like a month to go away). I'm starting to get a little bit better, so I'll hopefully be back running tomorrow.

Luckily, I did a lot of injury prevention exercises and homework/projects to make getting back to running easier. I think that will pay off in the coming week.

The training is definitely not going how I would like it to as of now. I'm usually never the type of person to miss runs, and never the type to make excuses. But I won't worry about that much, because when I'm well, I'm not going to be missing any runs for a long while.

Something that IS coming together well though is my weight. I weighed myself right before I was sick, got 129lbs. I'm definitely going to stick to eating clean, because it seems to be working. I was 136lbs during the XC season and 144lbs when I was doing 18mpw, so I can probably shatter some of my PRs.

My 400 x 20s improved quite a bit from last week, even though I was running them at a strictly tempo pace.

Last week I went out in ~1:25, then settled in and consistently ran 1:34.XX. For the last one I pushed it a bit (but not all-out) and got 1:22.XX.

This week I went out in ~1:18, then settled in and ran ~1:30s, mostly high 1:29s and sometimes 1:30s. There were a few (2-3) 1:25-6s scattered inside all of that, and I closed in at 1:25.

What should that indicate (if anything) for 800m-5K?

PROGRESS!

Hilly 6Mi Tempo (Really 6.3Mi) went from high 49:XX to low 46:XX on Thursday. I was not expecting to go (relatively) fast at all because my legs were feeling a bit sluggish and there was a furious headwind for ~1 Mile.

I hit 1:25 - 1:28 on today's 400 x 20s, mostly getting around high 1:26:XX (but with the occasional 1:22-1:24). Closed out in 1:20 by sprinting the last 100m.

800. First lap go out hard, very hard, like 50 point... then hang on, maintain form around the top curve and keep that turnover going... 1:44 point is within your grasp.

Multiple speed training is important to prevent injuries and improve ability.

In order to race fast you must train fast. You must also train by feel not only by numbers. Perhaps you are running too many slow miles and not improving other important areas. You have three energy systems. To me it seems that you are concentrating too much on just one.

Do some reading then ask another question.