How to Create Your Own Training Plan (with a Printable PDF!)
Plan Your Training to Simplify Your Training
When the rest of life gets crazy as more than often it does, I find it particularly helpful to not have to think too hard about what my workout is going to be, and to instead just go out there and do it! Here is where planning becomes super helpful!
One of the main ways that I plan my workouts is to have a weekly schedule in place, so that I know that I generally do X kind of run on Y day—more on that in detail below!—and the other way that I make my training simple is to actually map out my entire season’s training in miles by week and by day ahead of time. This is actually a lot easier than it sounds, and to make it even easier on you, you can find a downloadable PDF that correlates with these instructions, so that you can build your own at-a-glance training log right below here as well as at the very bottom of this blog post! Without further ado, here is how to create your very own at-a-glance training planner and log.
Create a nicely formatted training plan grid!
When I do this for myself, I actually get a big piece of plain white paper (I use the legal size of 9x14, but a regular sheet of 9x11 computer paper works great too!), and make myself a mock calendar: one row for each week, and then 7 boxes for the days. Basically, just draw yourself a grid, and leave a little room to the right of the grid at the end so you can tally up any data you feel will be useful like weekly mileage, days run, etc. I like to do this the old school written way, but I am sure you could do it electronically too! Obviously, you can do this the old fashioned way as I do, OR just save time and print out the PDF above!
First, pen in the numbers for the dates in the upper righthand corner of each square. (You could probably use the calendar format page in Microsoft Word to avoid this step, and just print a calendar page, but I like seeing weeks at a time in this way without the month chopping a week in half as usually happens.)
The first thing I do is mark down any important days running-wise: usually these are races. Then, you map everything else out around that because you want to feel good when you are testing yourself at your race or time trial.
As we don't have many races right now, you can also just think of yourself as mapping out a 12-16 week training "season" whether you are racing or not. In general, it is a good idea to take a little downtime (not necessarily a total run break, but maybe 1-2 weeks of half of your usual mileage) after about a 12-16 week period just to rejuvenate your whole body a bit.
Next!: start to tentatively map out your training load!
Decide how many days per week you'd like to run:
Whether you are running 3 days/week or every single day, here I would consider the flow of your overall energy input/output: ex. Pre-pandemic, I always took Mondays off from running because I taught a cycle class and I found that both those activities on the same day just destroyed my legs for too long. Right now I run 5 days/week with Mondays and Thursdays off since I tend to have more work those days and it is easier to just do a nice big swim instead. So, consider what day(s) you may want to take off, etc. This may take a little experimentation, but you will figure it out!
If newer to running, start with 3-4 days/week and just get very comfortable with that first!
If you are an experienced but injury-prone runner, consider running 5-6 days/week instead of 7.
Note: I would actually really recommend taking that one day off per week: if you get antsy like I do, just find another form of cardio to satisfy your inner bouncy self! I think this is super helpful for recovery! When I ran in college, I always took Wednesdays off from running and swam instead and I always really enjoyed that. In my buildup to my Olympic Trials qualifying marathon, I took Mondays off and then most usually ran ONE MILE on Thursdays literally as slow as I could go, just to shake out the legs. In other words, you can train extremely successfully or perhaps even more successfully on fewer than 7 days/week.
Decide upon your weekly mileage.
This is actually something that I tentatively pencil in to the right of my weekly "rows" so that I can just follow my guide and not think too much about it later. This mapped out mileage is helpful for when the rest of life takes off and gets crazy: I don’t have to stop and consider what the heck I am doing; instead, I simply follow my developed plan.
So, I go through and map this out for the whole 12-16 weeks (and allow myself the flexibility to change something on the fly if need be too!). So, you just go down the weekly rows and pencil in your tentative mileage numbers for each of the weeks. Here are things to consider when you do that:
As a general rule of thumb, you do not want to increase mileage by more than 10% each week from the previous total.
There are exceptions to the above rule. They are:
Ignore the 10% rule if you are an experienced runner coming back from a short break OR building to your "comfortable base volume" (for lack of a better phrase). For example, after a marathon, I take two weeks of absolutely zero running (though I do swim!) and can safely jump to about 25-30 miles/week for my first week back. Similarly, if you have been running for a long time and know you can very safely, comfortably manage X miles/week as a base volume, you are likely totally fine to increase more than 10%/week to get there. I know I am very comfortable in the 40s/50s, so I tend to increase at my own comfort level through there rather than the 10%/week (but after the 50s, I am VERY careful!)
If you are brand new to running, think less about the 10% rule than just getting comfortable running 1-3 or 4 miles or so for a few days per week!
When you start to get beyond your "comfortable base volume" is where you need to start proceeding more cautiously. When I worked myself into the 70s in spring/summer 2020, I was very careful and took a slight down week after about 3-4 weeks instead of building straight up. (Yes, I know!: 70 miles/week sounds like crazytown to me too! Remember though that I am a 2:44 marathoner: I have worked up to that weekly mileage over YEARS, plural, and definitely not in just a couple training cycles. Also, in running my 2:44, it is very worth noting that I was mostly in the 50s with just a week or two at the very low 60s! Only the pandemic drove me to the 70s, ha!!)
Avoid increasing volume and intensity at the same time. Do not schedule your longest long run on the same week as your big 10k race. When you start introducing additional intensity, be aware of your recovery and take easy runs easier.
Remember cross training is often a fabulous idea: whether you swim or lift or elliptical or bike or do yoga, the other activities you do besides run can often make you a stronger runner! (Tip: running is addictive... you will see a lot of runners who just run, but you can be stronger by doing even just a small amount of other sports too!)
As with everything, listen to your body! What works for you, works for you! (This may take a little time to figure out, and this could change over time too! For example, in the first year of living in a new place, I think you should always allow yourself some grace to figure out how your training will work in your new environment, and slightly less is often better than slightly too much in this and in most cases.)
Decide upon your daily mileage.
So, now you use your totals from each weekly row to tentatively pencil in your mileage for each day. Here you want to be relatively steady but also have some variance across days. Thus, you should figure out what your average run needs to be to get to your weekly total with your desired number of days run per week, but you should NOT simply run that number on all your running days.
In other words, if you want to run 30 miles/week in 5 days of running, your average length of run is 6 miles, but don’t just run 6, 6, 6, 6, and then 6 miles. Your body will be happier if you have at least one longer run and one shorter run than the average length run. So, you could do something like: 9-3-6-6-6 or 8-7-6-6-3, etc.
If you are aiming for a longer race, like a half marathon or full marathon, this is 100% something to take into account here too. In general, your long runs should also not just shoot straight up, just like your weekly overall mileage doesn’t go straight up. I like to increase my long runs slowly, by just 1-2 miles/week. You’d be surprised how quickly you actually get to that 20 mile long run in the middle of marathon training. Especially for those long long runs (for me, those are ones which are 16-17+), I take a “down” long run of a lesser amount (maybe 10-14 miles) the following week. This lets your body more fully recover from your longest long runs.
I like to determine my daily mileage by days of the week. This doesn’t have to be super precise, and don’t fret if it changes a little bit here and there as you go, but in general, I think it is very helpful to know, for instance, that Tuesdays are your longest long run besides your actual long run, or that sort of thing. So, just evaluate which days are best suited for your slightly longer runs and take that into account when pencilling in your mileage.
One additional important point to really emphasize here: especially for long runs in the middle of marathon training, I like to often often alternate every other week with one more substantial long run, and one relative shorter long run once I get to around 15-16 miles or so. So instead of just increasing straight up continuously from 15 to around 22 or 23 (my max length as of now) by just adding more and more mileage to the LR each week, I will more slowly increase my long run length by alternating between one week where my LR miles increase, and one where my LR is a lesser, more comfortably completed length. For example, week by week, those long runs might look something like this: 16, 12, 17, 13, 18, 13, 19, 13, 20, 12, 22. Just like when you get beyond the “comfortable” volume for your weekly mileage, proceed a little slower when you get into those longer long runs too.
Now, start to fill out your chart as you train!
Now the fun really begins! It really is very satisfying and gratifying to fill in your weekly mileage chart as you go! I use a gel pen to go over the pencilled numbers (rather than erasing anything), and since I use my training chart for swimming as well as running volume, I always circle my running numbers so they stand out more. Another thing I do is to list my activities for that day in order: so if I do a morning swim and an afternoon run, the swim yardage is listed first and the afternoon run mileage goes under that and is then circled. You could apply the same principles of organization to any other sports or exercises you’d like to chart alongside your running volume that will have an impact on your training. All I put in this entire chart is numbers, so that it really is easier to see everything at a single glance for trends.
The only thing as satisfying as doing your workout is (for me, anyhow) writing it down after the fact. This “at a glance” training log can become a great way to track your training patterns, what works, what doesn’t, and to see how far you’ve come over time. Go you go!
Below, download a PDF with a 8 week blank at-a-glance training log to get planning!
