A training calendar lets you focus your workout schedule to help you be at peak performance for race day. Dividing your calendar into training cycles creates a strategy to build your fitness. After your race, your can go back to your calendar to evaluate your training plan and make adjustments before you schedule your next race.
Step 1
Choose a race date that gives you enough time to train and mark this on your calendar. If you have races that fall in different seasons, or already have a strong fitness base, your race date can be from seven to 14 weeks away. If your focus is on one race, or you need more time to build fitness, give yourself 15 to 30 weeks before it.
Step 2
Write your endurance training weeks on your calendar. During your weeks of endurance running you will focus on increasing your mileage and building stamina. If you're using a short training period, the first three to six weeks from your first day of training will be endurance weeks. For a long training cycle, this will be six to 12 weeks.
Step 3
Mark the following two to four weeks as strength weeks if you are on a short training cycle, or four to six weeks for a long cycle. Your strength training weeks should target speed. This is the time to increase the intensity of your runs by adding interval training and hills.
Step 4
Write in "tapering" as the next training section on your calendar. This will be the next week after your strength weeks for short training cycles or the following two to three weeks for long cycles. The goal of this phase is to let your body rest before your race. Keep running, but cut back on your mileage and intensity.
Step 5
Incorporate a recovery period after your race. Your body needs time to heal after weeks of hard work. If you return to quickly to hard training, you risk overuse injuries and may not peak in fitness at the right time for your next event. Mark this recovery on your calendar as three to eight weeks after your race, depending on how hard or long the event was.
Tips and Warnings
- At the beginning of each week, plan your workouts and write them on your calendar. This helps keep you on track to meet your training goals. If you have to modify a workout, write what you actually did on your calendar. This lets you look back at your training to see where you can make improvements, but also shows you how much progress you've made.
- Increase your weekly mileage by no more than 10 percent during the endurance phase. Pushing too far too soon can cause overuse injuries that might force you to stop training altogether.
Things You'll Need
- Calendar
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