Planning the rest of 2009

When discussing my season plan with Mitch from CounterpartCoaching, I described my goal for 2010 and the upcoming IM race as “run the run”. I also said that I’d be happy with my slowest IM times in swimming (1:18) and cycling (6:23) and then have a decent marathon (4:10) which would allow me to PR (currently at 11:58).

General Goals

Mitch told me that with these goals the best use of my time was to focus on weight loss and running for the rest of 2009. At first, I had thought to get back into a more balanced, tri-like training plan as I had focused on my running for the first part of the year with the ultra marathon in May. He said that my bike can be quickly built up to a decent level within a relatively short time in spring and that swimming doesn’t really matter anyways. If I built up some bike fitness in the fall, I’d loose most of that fitness in the winter anyways.

Also, as I want to loose some weight (see last weeks blog post on weighty issues), he said it would be a bad idea to take December as easy, unstructured training.

Instead, I’ve set the following goals for the rest of the year 2009:

• weight loss (get down to under 86kg by the end of the year)
• shorter, faster races (some 10ks, which I haven’t run for a while) and the accompanying training (interval sessions, tempo runs, etc.)
• volume through frequency

This is the way my training plan looks like when put on a calendar:

1st half of September

Get back into regular training after my vacation. Add some biking and swimming (if time allows). At the end of the phase, I’ve put a 9 point something running race – my first shorter race in quite a while.

2nd half of September

Increase the length of my “long” run and overall volume. Continue with swim and bike as time allows. At the end of the month, there is a “traditional” half marathon race I’m going to do again and meet a couple of old friends.

At the end of September, I want to be “back in swing” and run a PR on the course (currently 1:38:30 – I’ve run faster half marathons, but the course is not too easy and it was in spring when really preparing). Weight goal is under 89kg.

1st half of October

Add some interval sessions to the mix and work on my speed. Three hard running sessions in two weeks – one longer run with some faster sections, one interval session (1k repeats or so) and probably another interval run with some tempo segments (for example 3*7 min at half-marathon pace or something similar). Starting in October, I want to get into a better swimming shape, so I can start swimming in my squad by November when the new “winter season” starts.

I’ve also got another short race lined up on October 11th .

2nd half of October

Next two weeks, probably similar to the first two weeks in October. Another possible half-marathon race (Oct 25th), maybe find a 10k race instead. Weight goal for end of October: under 88kg.

November

At the end of November there is a big race that I want to do really well. It’s a very popular, beautiful  26k race around a large lake in Ratzeburg. Because of the time of year, usually I’m not very well prepared for it. This year I have a chance to really prepare for it in November rather than just start doing longer runs again. It would be great to complete the race in under 2 hours which would be a huge PR for the course (currently at 2:09h).

After the October race, there are five weeks to the November race. I’ll probably take a couple of easier days after the October race. Also, I’ll want to freshen up for the race – almost another week. This gives me three full weeks (maybe including four weekends) of training. Within this time, I want to do about five hard sessions (two longer runs with some tempo, two short intervals, one mixed session). If I can set it up, maybe I’ll do a track session with some pretty short fast sections (400m or so).

Weight goal for end of November: under 87kg.

December

Not totally sure what to in December. I’ll probably do a 10k race on Dec 31st to end the year, but that will be more “fun” than “performance” oriented. Maybe I’ll find another 10k race earlier in the month, but at that time of the year there are not too many attractive, close-by races.

So what I’m thinking about is doing a personal challenge of 31 run sessions in 31 days. As there are some days where I probably won’t be able to run, this would require a couple of “doubles”. But it’ll be interesting to see how my body will hold up.

Any suggestion you can think of to improve my plan?