Training Plan

With still a decent amount of time to the Mount Festival event now is the time to really start knuckling down into your training.  For the past few weeks you have been ticking along with some nice base fitness work, not getting too worn down, and looking at making the most of your recovery and down time.  But now comes the time to start actually planning for how you are going to train for the event.
This shouldn’t mean you suddenly start doubling up your training hours, doing crazy long and hard workouts, or ripping into over race paced work….not at all.  In fact the training volume probably won’t need to change much over the next few weeks, but what does change is your mental focus for the event coming up. Now when you go training the sessions are going to start becoming more specific to your race.

So how do you chose the Training Plan to use, and how long should it run for? 

The ideal for most events up to Half Iron Distance is either a 12 or 16-week plan.  16 weeks gives you a bit more Base training whereas the 12 weeks might put you into harder training sooner.  One thing you want to make sure of though is that the Training Plan is well structured and specific to the event you’re training for, and is scaled to your own ability.  You don’t want to be following an advanced level plan if you are doing your first event, and likewise, an Advanced athlete may find a Beginner plan leaves them a bit short on Training Load. Use a trusted source to find your Training Plan.  Quite often word of mouth is good here, and if you have a friend who’s followed a plan successfully and found it prepared them well for the event, then it’s probably a good plan for you to follow.

You may come across a Training Plan from a printable PDF, which works great, these are simple to follow and convenient.  Other plans are incorporated into Athlete Community management software, so you receive the plan to your Desktop or Phone App and within that, you may have access to an online community to learn from and share ideas with.  This is one of the Coaching models we have here at Foot Traffic and we have found it to be a highly successful method of training.  Whichever option you follow make sure you follow the plan, trust the process and try not to modify it too much.  The plan would have been written with the intention of it being followed mostly to the letter.