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Best places to find training plans?
I'm hoping someone can help me as I'm feeling a bit lost at the moment.
I recently did my first half marathon and am due to do another next weekend. However, after that I'm thinking of scaling back the distance for a bit and would like to work on improving my 10k time.
I'm much better and committed when following a proper plan- for the half I followed a really good, helpful one but it was provided by the race organisers so specific for the half.
Can anyone recommend anywhere that is good for finding training plans? I've had a quick look online but can't find anything I particularly like the look of.... I'm happy to pay for something if it's worth it.
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Comments
The training for the two events needn't be that different, depends what sort of quality work you have been doing. You can keep all the mileage and long runs going and drop the length of intervals/tempo sessions to build a bit more speed. Why do you say you don't like the look of the plans you saw? Not sure you're supposed to!
Ha good point! No it wasn't so much the content I didn't like, just the lack of detail in some of them. I'm probably just being lazy- the half marathon one I had was really good as it even said the paces I needed to be doing for different training ones (it's a sub 2hr one I've been following so was guided for that) whereas I haven't been able to find anything similar for 10k- just vague plans that don't always seem to make clear what the difference between the various training runs is.
I think I like things to be quite definite and tell me exactly how fast to run when, not plans that are a bit more subjective- e.g. 5/10 effort levels as I personally don't find that as helpful
Elizabeth, I know exactly what you mean... I really like not having to think about what type of run I'm doing on any particular day.
I've had success in the past with a Great Run (greatruntraining.org) training plan (for Half Marathon, but they do 10K plans as well). I have friends who like the Asics training plans, and RW have plenty of plans available as well - just go to the Training tab at the top of the page.
Pfitzinger and Latter have a good book with training plans for 5k to half marathon (and a mixed plan for multiple distances). Most based on upwards of 4 runs a week starting around 30-35 miles a week.
As said above, the RW plans are good. Take a look at the training pace calculator and the "Smartcoach", which you can play with to get the kind of plan you like.
I don't think there's anything new under the sun here. The basic ingredients are long slow runs, medium-distance medium-pace runs, and various permutations of shorter and longer intervals to improve pace. The mix will vary depending on the goal and there's nothing to stop you from adapting a plan to suit yourself. If you want to improve your 10K pace, you need to do more shorter faster stuff. You could choose a 5K plan for the emphasis on speedier stuff but make the long runs a bit longer, for example.