Creating a training plan for yourself is very difficult.
You might feel lost not knowing what to do next when having a goal of your next personal best in mind. You’re seeing a myriad of possibilities and workouts that could help you.
Every workout you do has a different effect on your body and it is good to know which workout has which effect especially when you create your own training plan.
You might ask questions like:
- In what period should I do VO2max sessions, in what period threshold sessions?
- How much volume is needed to reach my goal?
- How should my intervals build up?
- How should I arrange my weekly training sessions?
One thing is for certain: You can’t foresee everything that happens over the period of a 12 or 16 week training plan. And of course: A 12 or 16 week specific build up will take you somewhere but is also essential what you’ve done before.
Therefore you have to be open for changes in the training schedule. If you need extra rest days or you have some other appointments in your calendar simply adjust the training plan. This is the beauty of building your own plan and doing your own training. You are in charge.
Every human is unique, has other stress levels, other prerequisites. Only you know your body better than anyone else.
Over the years, I have realized that training according to a training plan takes away the pressure and stress of having to deal with your own training. This can be a relief for many people. However, I think it can also have the opposite effect: You want to retrain the plan as correctly as possible without missing a session and this is where the problems start. The athlete no longer listens to his own body and doesn’t realize that the plan may be too ambitious. This is a problem that arises with standard plans. If you have to decide between advanced and beginner here, the ambitious athlete does not always choose the plan that is better suited to them.
The advantage of a self-created training plan
With a self built training plan you can say that YOU did that and learned yourself. It is different from having a coach programming your training or using a standard plan. The more you try things out for yourself, the more you get to know the effects of the training and learn how to use different training methods.
Building a training plan is something that I wouldn’t really recommend for people on a beginner level. It’s only for those who are run consistent, know their body well and have a decent knowledge in trainings theory.
The set of tools:
Intensity:
- Running speed: The pace or velocity during a run, adjusted based on workout goals.
- Type of intensity: Different intensity types (e.g., aerobic, threshold, VO2 max).
- Time/distance at intensity: Duration or distance spent at a specific intensity (e.g., 5 min at 85% effort).
- Break length between intervals: Recovery time between efforts during interval training (e.g., 1-minute jog or complete rest).
- Number of repetitions: How many intervals or sets of a workout are performed (e.g., 8x400m).
- Perceived exertion: Subjective measure of how hard a workout feels (rated on a scale of 1-10).
Duration/Distance/Volume:
- Volume per session: Distance or time covered in a single run (e.g., 10km or 60 minutes).
- Volume per day/week/year: Accumulated distance or time over different periods (e.g., 50km per week).
- Volume of strength work: Amount of strength training (in minutes or sets) added to supplement running.
- Volume of cross-training: Non-running activities (cycling, swimming, etc.) to balance training load.
Frequency:
- Macro-/meso-/micro-periodization: Training cycles designed for different periods (macro: long-term, meso: medium-term, micro: short-term).
- Number of runs per week: Total number of runs scheduled in a week (e.g., 4–6 times per week).
- Number of rest days: Scheduled days off from running for recovery.
Fueling:
- Fueled before run: Whether food or nutrition is taken before the run (e.g., breakfast before a morning run).
- Fueling during the run: Nutrition intake during long runs or races (e.g., energy gels, electrolytes).
- On an empty stomach: Running in a fasted state without any carbohydrate intake before.
1. Choosing the goal and date
Without setting goals you’re waving around with your training and not having a clear focus. I did that mistake myself a lot. It was only when I signed up for a race that I started to work towards this goal and put myself through the tough workouts in preparation for a marathon.
So my advice to work against that is to…
- Set a goal.
- Sign up for a race as the goal.
This places yourself in a back against the wall situations. You have paid the money for the race so it’s time to put in the work.
If you’re an ambitious athlete who runs fast times it makes sense to join races where you really can race against other people. Search for big races where all the fast guys start. This should be a good motivation.
How do I set realistic goals?
- The goal should be based on your previous performances (or times at other distances – the VDOT calculator can help here: If you know your 5K time, you can deduce what time you could theoretically run a 10K or half marathon).
- Calculate your available time! How much time can you realistically plan for your training each week?
- How long do you want to spend on achieving this goal?
You can also make a more long time approach e.g.: In the next year I want to be able to run XX:XX for X km. Especially in very elite sports people mostly train for the next world championships or for the next olympics.
2. Assessing the current fitness level
Before diving into a structured training plan, it’s crucial to assess your current fitness level. This self-assessment helps you understand where you stand and what you need to focus on to reach your goals. Without a clear understanding of your present abilities, you risk overtraining or focusing on the wrong aspects of your training.
Health First Approach:
The first and most important questions when assessing your fitness level are:
Are You Injury-Free? Are you healthy?
It’s essential to ensure that you aren’t dealing with any acute or chronic injuries that could hinder your training. If you have pain, inflammation, or movement restrictions, you need to address these issues before progressing. This might mean seeking help from a physiotherapist or doctor to prevent long-term problems or facing the problem yourself.
Limiting factors, such as tightness, muscle imbalances, or poor mobility, can also limit your potential. Identifying and working on these weaknesses through strength training, mobility exercises, or preventative measures is key to avoiding setbacks during your training.
Where Are You Now?
Once you’re confident that you’re injury-free, the next step is to get a clear picture of where you are right now and where you want to go. Asking the right questions will help you evaluate your current fitness and identify areas for improvement:
- When is your goal race? How many weeks do you have until race day? This question helps you determine how much time you have for different phases of training—base building, sharpening, and tapering.
- How many days per week can you run? Depending on your availability and schedule, you can determine a realistic weekly training volume. If you can only run three days a week, your plan will look different from someone who can train five to six days a week.
- How many kilometers are you comfortably running right now? Your current weekly mileage gives insight into your aerobic base. Make sure to increase your mileage gradually to avoid injury. A good rule of thumb is not to increase weekly mileage by more than 10% at a time.
- What is your current fitness level? Your current running times and distances are the best indicators of where you are now. What are your current 5K or 10K times or whatever race you did? These are valuable data points that help you figure out where you need to focus your training.
- What’s missing? Identify which specific skills for the goal race that you need to develop:
- Do you need more speed? You might need to focus on shorter, faster interval training.
- Do you need better speed endurance? Tempo and threshold runs could help here.
- Do you need more endurance? Long, slow runs might need to be prioritized.
Working on weaknesses:
- Lack of speed
- Lack of core stability
- The arms do what they want
- The foot strike is more on the heel
An efficient running style is usually not promoted in standard running plans. Even if more running improves efficiency, you can work specifically target these areas in a training plan trying to improve.
3. Build the training plan
For me designing a training plan means working backward from your race date.
A good first question to ask yourself might be which workouts should be achievable at the end of the training plan. These workouts are also called indicator workouts and can indicate what time is realistic in a race.
In order to know where to start you can ask: For what distance am I able to hold the race pace right now in an interval workout? All you can do here is test or give a good guess about your current capabilities. I can say that testing is definitely the better option here.
1. What are indicator workouts for races?
Here I listed to examples that can be a good indicator for a 5k oder 10k race:
5k race: 5-6 x 1000m @3:18min/km (1:30′ rest) -> Indicator workout for a Sub16:30 5k
10k race: 3x3km @3:29min/km (2′ rest) -> Indicator workout for a Sub35 10k
2. Lay out a general volume progression
The weekly distance you need to cover for a specific target time is different for each person and also depends on the runner’s previous history. It is best to orientate yourself on how many kilometers you have covered on average over the last few weeks and try to increase this volume slightly.
A common system for building volume is the 3:1 system – three weeks of building mileage followed by one week of recovery (reduced mileage by 20-30%). This ensures that you’re gradually increasing workload while allowing for recovery to avoid overtraining. If you have 16 weeks for trainings you can divide your training into 4 blocks of training.
If the training block is 16 weeks long I would build an overview like this.
Example for a distance progression (im km):
Block 1: 68km / 74km / 80km / 62km
Block 2: 78km / 83km / 89km / 68km
Block 3: 79km / 87km / 92km / 75km
Block 4: 91km / 94km / 72km / 72km
3. Periodize the weeks with different intentions
Having a different focus in training is important. You can’t sustain a good form and high loads of training over weeks and month. Therefore a progressive build up not only for the period of the training plan but also the whole season is important.
Example:
Week 1-4: Base – Focus on aerobic sessions and short intervals
Week 5-8: Base – Mixing threshold and VO2max in
Week 9-12: Build – Race pace specific workouts
Week 13-16: Peak and Taper – Race pace specific workouts and degressive load
4. How to structure a training week?
Die Wochenstruktur kann für einen 5km Läufer anders sein wie für einen Marathonläufer.
The difficulty in a weekly structure is to space out key workouts during the week to be as recovered as possible. Also strength training sessions should also be kept as far away as possible from the key workouts. Schedule the workouts with minimum of a day of rest. Better is two days.
Example 1: Marathon Build up Phase
This is an example for a schedule someone in a build up for a marathon. Scheduled are two hard workouts and a long run. The advantage of this schedule is that there is at least one relaxed day in between each hard day.
Mo: Rest
Tue: Hard
Wed: Easy + Strength
Thu: Easy
Fri: Hard + Strength
Sat: Easy
Sun: Long
Example 2: Marathon Peak Phase
Mo: Hard
Tue: Easy
Wed: Hard
Thu: Easy + Strength
Fri: Easy
Sat: Long Run with Marathon Race Pace
Sun: Easy + Strength
Example 3: 5K Peak Phase
Mo: Rest
Tue: Hard
Wed: Easy + Strength
Thu: Easy + Speed
Fri: Easy
Sat: Hard
Sun: Easy + Strength
5. Build interval workout series based up on the race pace
The difficult question here is how much time do I need to get from pace A to a faster pace B.
There are different ways to get to your goal pace:
- Increase the pace over a certain distance
- Increase the distance with a certain pace
- Decrease the rest in between intervals
- Increase repetitions
90/10 rule:
For most runners, running about 90% of the time at low to moderate intensity and 10% at high intensity is effective for building endurance and avoiding burnout.
30min V02Max (machbar in einem Workout)
40-1h Threshold (in between 10k and half marathon pace)
1-3h Sub Threshold (Marathon Pace)
Recommendation:
When building a training plan a good overview is to list all volume, all long runs and all intervals among each other.
6. Add tune up races to determine and sharpen your form
In the course of a training plan, you should incorporate tune-up races to check your form and training progress on the one hand and to sharpen your form on the other. A race always has a different impact and stimulus than training.
7. Add taper
The last two weeks before a race should be degressive in volume and intensity to give the body the time to recover and develop a good form for the race.
4. What is important for specific races?
Every race distance is different and should have a different approach in training. Here are some key factors to have in mind when creating a training plan:
5km:
- VO2max workouts
- Ability to maintain high speed
10km:
- Treshold workouts
- VO2max workouts
Half marathon:
- Longer intervals maintaining speed
- Longer tempo runs
Marathon:
- Building up easy long runs
- Building up long runs with marathon pace
- Practice fueling and hydration during long runs
- Ability to pace well
5. How to track your progress?
Without real measurement it’s difficult to answer if you’re progressing in a period of training plan.
Many factors play a role in performance: fatigue, heart rate, HRV, environmental conditions such as temperature or wind.
In my opinion the best conditions you can get is on the track in an individual time trial at goal pace.
A good metric can be the Stryd Sensor. It shows you the power that you are producing in every run. It’s like a powermeter on the bike.
Many professional runners and amateur athletes now work with scientific tools. The gold standard here is lactate measurement and oxygen uptake measurement.
6. Flexibility and adaption
Be prepared to adjust your goal if you realize it is too ambitious or not challenging enough. Injuries, work or family commitments or other unforeseen events can affect the time and intensity of your training. Make sure to listen to your body regularly and make adjustments if necessary.
Don’t lose focus and pursue other goals on the side. For example, a fast 5km time and a middle distance triathlon may not be the best addition to your training.
