Below is the rough outline of the upcoming training plan through July 4th and the Butte to Butte race. The overall plan is broken up into eight 11-day cycles, which includes a day off every 11 days. And each cycle has one long run and 2-3 harder days, meaning about 6 easy days.

None of the workouts are developed yet, as they will depend on the total volume I'm able to do each week as well as the progression of my overall fitness. I anticipate the first few workouts will be fartleks, as I ease my body back into the training. Tempo runs are going to be important, as well, in training for a 10k, but I will most likely be breaking those up into mutliptle parts (i.e. 3x7min or 2x10min instead of 20min continuous) so that the quality can be a little higher. But in order for this to remain a "tempo" effort the rest between the efforts needs to be kept lower; a 1-3min break will keep this run more around aerbic threshold than a 5-8min more complete recovery, which would make it more of a 5k-10k effort and create a lot more lactate. Since the overall volume is lower right now, there is less "easy running" to help recover from higher prodcutions of lactate. So while we need to introduce the body to lactate, we do not want to overwhelm it.

I have a few tests thrown into the plan periodically so that I can check into my progress. While a lot of people may have more races to be able to use as tests, I do not plan on really racing before the Butte. Plus, the advantage of developing my own tests is that I can contorl the environment (same trail, track, etc.) better than running a race with a different course (hills, turns, etc.) each time. This can help increase the accuracy of any interpretations I make from the test results. With four tests written into the plan, I'm likely to alternate the tests. But I do want to repeat at least one of the tests to be able to make a direct comparison to an earlier effort and gauge my growth. The first test will probably be a two-mile effort, because there are a lot of charts (especially by Jack Daniels) that can help me interpret my fitness based on a 10-12min run.

Since the Butte is a 10k, I am going to aim my workouts at preparing for a race that will hopefully last around 37-40min. I believe more in training for the time of the goal effort than the distance. If you train for a distance, you will be running for a longer period of time at first and then cutting down, which is basically in contrast to the trend to increase mileage as the training plan progresses. That means the percentage of hard work will be higher in the beginning, which can lead to an increase in injuries, mental fatigue from too much hard work, etc.

For example, my goal pace is somewhere around 6:30 pace for the Butte, but right now at the very beginning of my training plan would probably be around 7:30-7:45 for a 10k. So, say I were to do two workouts a week for the 10k distance, that would be a total of 95-100 minutes of hard work as opposed to about 80min of hard work. Also, the work I do is likely to be a lower quality because of the increased distance of the workout. And I also believe that it is more important to have a quality of work that is going to be closer to the end effort than the quantity.

This plan is likely to be pretty fluid within the first few weeks, as the changes in my fitness is going to be very dramatic during this time. I will keep updating this plan to fit the changes in fitness and continuously hone my goal toward the Butte to Butte. Keep checking back as I will be providing updates to the training plan and also post all of my workout logs on the Training Log tab.

RIAA, Coach Matt

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