A Flexible Training Plan is Important

A Flexible Training Plan is Important

A training schedule is a great way to structure your training so that you are able to realize the greatest gains in your race performances. If you have a schedule, you are more likely to be ready for your race on race day rather than a couple weeks before or a couple weeks after. You are also more likely to put in the work you need because you will know what is expected of you every day.

Do not assume, however, that you need to have a training schedule that is set in stone. Sometimes you will have to swap workouts around, or skip a workout entirely and make it up a different week. Sometimes you might even skip a workout entirely and not bother making it up. Work, family, and your health are three things that can throw a wrench into the best plans, and being able to maneuver your training around obstacles will make it that much easier and less stressful to train. Here is a real-world example of changing up the training:

When I ran the New York City Marathon, I wanted some fast shorter distance runs in the meantime during my training but my race goal was to run an easy 3 hours to pace a friend through his first marathon. My long runs that I had scheduled in preparation were a 15 miler 6 weeks before New York at race pace, an 18 miler 5 weeks before, and a 20 miler 4 weeks before the marathon.

While I got my 15 miler and my 18 milers in without any trouble, I held off on the 20 miler until 3 weeks before the race. Because my training was fairly flexible, I could move things around and still be able to plan my workouts accordingly.

By having my 20 mile run 3 weeks until the target marathon, I could concentrate on recovering with no more than 12 mile runs after that.

There are two main reasons why I decided to move that final 20 miler back a week. The first was due to sheer exhaustion. After getting hurt over the previous summer, I had been steadily building my mileage back up and had not had a cut back week with lower mileage for a while.

I also had not been sleeping well for most of the week, so a 5k race the day before my originally scheduled 20 miler left me very tired after running in the mid-high 16s. The afternoon was then spent man-handling heavy furniture so it did not seem in my best interest to try over stressing myself a month out from the race.

The second reason was that because I was so exhausted, my right leg decided to stop supporting me early in the run. I had stretched it out and kept going, but a few times throughout the 10 miles I did run my leg leg would randomly give out. There was no pain; I'd just take a step and stumble a bit.

I decided that it was in my best interest to cut the run at half way and to get the long run in during the next week. Injuring myself 4 weeks before a marathon is not the recommended way of preparing for a race.

By having a flexible training plan, you can adjust to conditions as you find them rather than being stuck in a rigid structure that may not be appropriate to your circumstances. I was able to complete my long run a week later, recover and stay injury free before the marathon, and then paced my friend through his first race into a 2 hour and 55 minute personal best performance for him. Had I been hurt, he may have had a little trouble motivating himself late in the race to finish as well as he did, and I certainly would have missed out on a great marathon experience.