How to know when to change training plans
When consistency is king how do you know when it's time to move on or when you need to endure?
For a while now I’ve been working on a base building plan. It’s not all easy running - there are some short hills in it (think 8-12 seconds) and some short flat intervals (30-45 seconds) but for the most part base building is just about the accumulation of volume.
It was a 12 week plan, and I was 10 weeks in. And I wrote it, so I don’t have anyone to point the finger at.
Like most things in life, I get to about 90% done (or in this case 83.33% done) and I lose all drive to achieve the thing. This could be because mentally I feel like it’s done, because I am so close - so I just switch off. It might be an ADHD or an Autism thing or it might be a human thing - I have no idea. But the evidence is all around me in five million very nearly almost finished projects.
You could look at that as strong evidence to push through. But in this case I didn’t. I looked at - what was my goal? Well the goal was to build a base after long covid and I was up to 80-90km a week. So I said to myself, you could just call this done.
The next step, which is usually my preferred way of approaching running fitness is to work on the short speed (or at least shorter speed of 800m) so I knew going into that my weekly mileage would be more like 70km, so there was no need to spend a few more weeks getting up to 115km or whatever the program finished at. For my purposes it was where I needed to be.
Sometimes finishing early doesn’t have any negative consequences on the next thing, but mentally you get all the benefits of starting something new and something with more structure and purpose.
So how do you know?
The truth is sometimes you don’t know, until you look back on it. And over time you get a better sense of yourself - when have you been trying to avoid something and when have you just been ready.
Even today, I had my first real workout and it was LONG. 30 minute warm up, 9 x 800m Interval with 200m Recovery, 3 x 200m Interval (Faster) with 200m Recovery, Cool Down. I did not go in with a high level of confidence. It was 87% humidity which didn’t help and it had just been a long time since I’d had paces to aim for and it’s a lot of faster running. But I did it and I felt such a sense of accomplishment afterwards - that’s when it clicked for me. This is what I have been missing. The ebb and flow of workouts and easy days. Doing hard things, even when you don’t think you can. Taking that energy into the rest of your week.
Actually the workout said 7-9 800m repeats. But we all know that means 9, right?
From podcast land . . .
Just in case you missed it: here is the podcast with Ness about how you go from nothing to a 50km event when your week is full of kids, business and mayhem. You can also listen to this on Apple Podcasts, or your preferred app. You can also listen and read episode notes on the website here.