Prioritized workouts during the week?
Something occurred to me recently that might be helpful for the training - designating which workouts are more 'key' than others during a week.
I travel some amount for work, and as such I anticipate often having to determine which workouts will get missed during a week, and which may be done in their place. Sometimes I travel for an entire week, sometimes only for two days. Normally these sort of contingencies are handled in the micro thread, but I'm wondering if some of the micro planning questions could be taken care of by determining which workouts are more important during a week.
So, for example - perhaps during the OS, everything gets equal weight - so a missed day is water under the bridge. However, during the last 12 weeks of an IM plan, certain workouts like the Thursday long run might be more important than, say, a Wednesday bike or a Tuesday run. If I knew that the Thursday long run was one of the priorities for that week (since it s a durability building activity), and I knew I'd be gone W-F, I could substitute Tuesdays activity with Thursdays long run. In this scenario, I'd be gone W-F anyway, so recovery would take place at that time.
Comments
During an IM it gets tricky and most likely would need a Macro Thread message to the coaches to figure out how to best handle your weeks.
However, using your specific example, I can of course tell you that the long Thursday run is absolutely a key workout for the week, and not only is simply doing it important, but it is also important that you do it with sufficient recovery time built in for your next absolutely key workout, the Saturday long ride.
Again, I encourage you to get some validation from someone smarter than myself, but I think it's pretty safe to assume your two highest priority workouts of the IM week are your 'Thursday' long run and your 'Saturday' long bike. If you are unable to do them on those specific days, hopefully RnP can advise you on the best restructure to still get them both in.
The new OS plans will be out and available to the members by late this week, so you can load them up over the weekend. You'll see that we've made more us of the comments section of the workouts.
PnI will be in IMFL for the race and for super high level CEO type business meetings between rounds of putput golf, go-kart races, parasailing, and having matching air brushed t-shirts made. We'll discuss the changes we want to make to the long course and can certainly take these suggestions into account.
Ryan,
There is some information on this in the wiki check here:
http://members.endurancenation.us/R...xpected%29
Workout Triage which discusses don't make up or harden an missed workouts:
http://members.endurancenation.us/R...Out+Triage
For the in season there is some great guidance on key workouts here and I've attached the appropriate section below but the whole thing is a good read on self coaching and do it your self adjustments:
http://members.endurancenation.us/R...usting+You
Additional Notes:
Priority workouts each week are, in order: long run, long bike, interval bike.
For all workouts, MS of the session has priority over the volume. For example, if the MS of the long run is more tolerable within a 1:30-45 run vs 2hr run, keep the MS and reduce the volume. This is the same for all workouts.
Fine to do Wed run as PM session vs brick. In fact, this is fine for all brick runs until maybe 2-4wks out from the race. However, keep in mind that you’re backing that brick up with a long run the next morning. If you feel a Wed PM run will compromise the Thursday long run, skip it.
Try to do all key workouts as AM sessions, to create 24hr+ separation between them (only exception might be Monday interval runs after Sunday ABP bike...you might want to push that to the PM as you'll only have to swim the next day).
Saturday has priority over Sunday. Sunday's MS + volume is a bonus.
Mondays and Fridays off or swim only is there for a reason. Try not to move other stuff to these days. Heck, try not to move legs period.
Recovery swim after Thurs long run, or any key session, is huge. Really helps a lot. Consider starting/finishing this run at a pool.
If you need to take a day off, take it and don't worry about it. That said, Monday and Friday are best.
Pace running within HIM and IM plans: as we've said, as the training volume goes up, it becomes harder and harder to integrate get-faster run training into these flavors of schedules. So, if it feels like the get-faster running in the schedule is beginning to compromise your ability to do all of the workouts, begin to forget about it and just run.
Run frequency has priority over run intensity first, run volume second. IOW, if the running is too hot for you, keep the frequency, turn down the intensity and keep the volume. If that still doesn't work, cut the volume. When in doubt, just run.
Gordon
We will need pics.