The “Road to 700” series is my effort to document my training and publish it in every four weeks. This is my attempt to gain 700 points in a trail race in order to get selected for the World Trail ans Asia Trail Championships.
BACKGROUND
Last running season, which ended with VUM in March, was a learning experience for me. I got rid of a few wrong practices and replaced them with the ones which truly matter. I made a huge progress in terms of race performance and understanding of training. I also managed to secure an ITRA score of 648, which is my highest score till now. But this is not enough, I need to score 700+ points in coming years. The sooner the better.
After VUM, I trained for and participated in Naneghat Epic. Performance was good here too. But I couldn’t get the desired points. So, I am going to try again.
With all the learning from previous year, and by experimenting with different training routines, I decided to consolidate everything that worked well for me. This led me to design a comprehensive and personalized training plan. Which, I will be sharing every month.
APPROACH
The biggest change, that is going to happen this time is how I approach my training. I usually follow 3 weeks up – 1 week down approach, and I’m going to continue the same. My idea of climbing the ladder was to increase the mileage and strength training load for 3 weeks and then add a recovery week. This time, in addition to the mileage, I’m also going to use few other matrices of my Coros watch, like the “Training Load”, “Itensity Trend”, and “Base Fitness”.
TRAINING STRUCTURE
I have divide my training in 3 categories
1) Aerobic mileage
Includes hours of low intensity, Z1-Z2 effort runs to increase mileage without breaking my body. This will also include hiking, to gain elevation.
2) Hard Intensity Workouts
These are again divided in three parts-
a) Short, high intensity sprints – This includes 8-10 sec of all out sprints, either on hill or on plain road, to increase motor unit recruitment by engaging more muscles, and to build speed in legs.
b) Medium duration speed sessions – To further push the body to maintain speed while recruiting more and more muscles.
c) Long duration sessions – Typically, longer than 2 minutes reps, with major focus on the threshold zone.
3) Strength Training
First month’s focus was to build the full body strength, with more focus on lower body. In coming months, it will be more event specific. This also includes the recovery yoga sessions.
TRAINING IN MONTH 1
I divided each week as below –
1) Three easy Z1-Z2 Runs
2) Two Hard sessions
3) One long run. I did 3 long hiking sessions and one long run in last 4 weeks.
For Strength Training, I am following below approach –
1) Core and Upper Body on easy run day.
2) Lower body on one of the hard session days.
Below are the charts to give you a brief of my training, starting from 13th October-
Although my mileage dropped in week 3 (Chart 1), but my training load was still higher (Chart 2). This indicates that I was still progressing in the third week. 4th one has to be a recovery week. Again, the mileage is only less by 6 kms, but there is a big drop in the training load.
Chart 3 shows that I started my training with a base fitness of 80 with an intensity trend at 50%.
Chart 4 shows that by the end of week 3, my base fitness increased to 97 with intensity trend at 125%.
In week 4, load impact, intensity and base fitness again came down.
Chart 5 is the overall snapshot of my training in the last one month. Primary focus was on Z1 and Z2. These two combined together, comprised 84% of the total mileage.
Next one month is going to be a similar one, with increases training load.
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