Critique this training plan

I don’t have much to add here, but this looks generally solid. Nothing stands out as something you should obviously not be doing

This is a good plan

Since the Sunday long run has an easy day before and after you can run it more uptempo, over a very hilly course, or throw in some surges. Say a progression run working down to a few quicker last few miles.

overall seems about right. one comment is if you find yourself in that first 8 week phase being tired the day after you do hill sprints on top of normal mileage you can group it together and do the LT workout and then some hill sprints at the end rather than on consecutive days

depending how strenuous those hill sprints are it may not be a factor at all

just something to keep in the back of your mind as potential adjustment if you feel like crap at some point

That makes sense to me. I was planning on having them the day before the Friday workout. Some short reps like 5x50m or something like that. I’ve never worked on my speed like this during the off season so I think it’ll help a lot.

Honestly most of this looks good, the intensity is really high though. Two workouts, hill sprints, and a long run is a pretty intense base phase, and it just goes up from there. The final workouts are mostly ridiculous. 16x400@1500 pace with 1 min rest? Are you kidding me? 8-10 reps of that workout and you have a good indicator of your race ability. The 15x200@800 pace with 1 min rest also seems ridiculous, a classic middle distance workout at my school is 3x4x200@800 pace with 1 minute between reps and 5 minutes between sets. That workout is not all out, but it's fairly solid effort and it's few reps with more rest than your workout. If you want a real all-out 800m prep session, you need to be doing longer reps than 200m. If you want an easier, more "drill" type workout, you need longer rest and probably fewer reps. An example would be 600@95% effort, full recovery, 400@95% effort, full recovery, 5x200 cutting down 33-31-29-27-25 with a 200 jog for rest. Another one would be 600-500-400-300-200-100@800 pace with 6-5-4-3-2 minutes recovery. Either of these could replace your 15x200 for a big sharpening 800m workout. The 3x800@1500 workout is fine, I personally wouldn't do it because I've never felt the need to do massive workouts like that but it should be completable without injuring you. The last workout I can't comment on because I've honestly never done a workout like that (all the 3k pace work I do is 400s, 600s, and 800s) but it seems also pretty difficult. For an 8:40/4:00 guy, you've got a 2k@5:46, a 1k@2:40, and a 600@1:36. I'd expect a race 2k to be 5:30-5:40, so you're almost racing a 2k just there. I'd expect a race 1k to be 2:32-2:33, so with the 2k already in your legs that 1k is going to be close to a race too. The 600 at the end doesn't sound as bad, but with two nearly-race-efforts in your legs, it might get a little rough.

Completely understand that, thanks for the feedback.

In my eyes I thrive off moderate intensity and once I ramp in up can crush some good races.

I do think the workouts I listed are really hard, but they’re supposed to be really hard. I did 12x400 last year and it was by far the hardest workout I’ve ever done. I think with a year I might be able to get up to 16 but I suppose those are just things that I’m going to decide on closer to the day.

This looks great.

Might be worth it to take a down week somewhere in the transitions but maybe not. Depends how you feel. I like adding in occasional short sprints in the specific block. You could also put in some races (if they exist) in the early blocks in the 10k-half marathon range. Just cut one workout and make the race your long run day. Sometimes it can be monotonous to train to train.

In P1, do a few 200/300s at 1500m pace to keep in touch with it. No need to make these super hard (i.e. take 3+ mins rest). It is just to keep in touch with what mile pace feels like.

In the 2nd phase, I would do the LT/5k and 10k/1500m split. I find those 10k/5k paced workouts to be the toughest in the schedule so doing both in the same week is going to be rough.

I would also think about working in some LT work in the final phase. Things like 4-6 miles at MP during your long run. Or replacing every other 10k session. 8 weeks is a long time to go without touching something.

As people have said your workouts are brutal. They are things you can do once or twice for confidence but not on a regular basis. 8-10x400 at 1500m pace is plenty. Or 10x200 at 800m. Try to do 16x400 and. you will just go stale.

And finally you are looking at a pretty long time (16 weeks) of hard training. I would think about cutting those phases down to 4-6 weeks each and doing more base training. I think you will be peaking in about the 3rd week of the final block.

Thanks for the input, it makes a lot of sense.

I will vary the workouts more than what I put. Definitely going to include 2-3 threshold sessions in the last phase.

I almost feel like we’re saying the same thing but in two different ways. In my plan the first two phases are distinct. One with very aerobic training and the second with some faster workouts.

What you are saying is add in a touch of faster work into the first phase, while at the same time backing off the length or some of the intensity of the second phase. If that makes any sense? I’ll have to think about it more.

I should note in my eyes that the second phase won’t be that intense. There will for sure be an emphasis on 5k and under paced workouts, but the will be of moderate volume and ample rest. Only the last phase is where I’m focused on really ratcheting up the intensity.

imo the whole idea of phased training is flawed and oversimplified. There is no need to completely transition the type of training at a set point. I like to think of it more as different focuses of training at different times. For your base phase the focus is aerobic development and improving lactate threshold but that does not mean that everything else disappears it is there just to a lesser extent or intensity. There still need to be 1500m paced reps

even if they are relatively few with a lot of rest.

There is a lot of nuances in training plans that are often left out. Things like easy weeks and the like.. I think 16 weeks of hard work is going to leave you fried. But I am making assumptions about how hard the workouts are and how you recover. You sort of have to play it by ear. But my general experience was that 6-8 hard 1500m work (8-10 400ms with 60s rest) was all I need to hit peak form and after that it was pretty much holding on. Depending on how you ramp the intensity (i.e. I was doing 8x400 with 3 mins rest before then), you might need more or less work.

But maybe you respond better to anaerobic work than I did. But again we are talking about relatively small differences (12 weeks versus 16).