The Retirement Plan

I haven't run for five weeks due to illness, so there hasn't been much to report on this blog.


I've spent more than a decade on this blog explaining how to train for specific events, but I've never covered the question of: What would you do if you just wanted to be in really good shape, but never race? That's sort of a beginner plan and also a retirement plan and not a bad jack-of-all-trades plan.


The more you run, the better shape you can get in, but also the greater the odds of getting injured. The sweet spot seems to be an average of an hour per day, so that's where I'm going to start. From there, I'm going to use the "Eternal Season" plan, which I can no longer find online, but for the record, I didn't invent it. Then I'm going to add ideas from Joe Friel's triathlon training bible, without actually cross-training.


At the moment, I'm in about 6:30 mile or 22:30 5K shape, which gives me training paces to add.


Monday: 6 miles of hills (7x my Ohio Street hill and 14x my Ramsey hill are exactly 6 miles), done slowly, alternating long hills one week and shorter hills the next.


Tuesday: 6 miles, with intervals. If I do long hills, I'll do short intervals; if I do short hills, I'll do long ones. Either 12x400m under 1:48 with 200m jog recoveries or 4x1200m in 5:25-5:49 with 400m jog recoveries.


Wednesday: 4 miles with speed skills. 6x100m in 21-24 seconds, each working on improving some aspect of running form.


Thursday: 7 miles with the last 4.5 at 8:24-8:34 per mile


Friday: 4 miles on difficult trail, to work on balance and agility. Included would be 4x50m uphill sprints, all-out.


Saturday: 6 miles with a 5K time trial, or with 3 miles at 7:40-8:30/mile.


Sunday: 11 miles at 10 min./mile, planned as a social run


This gives a total of 44 miles done in a bit over 7 hours for the week. It manages to cover every type of running except those specific to very long distances and has them all in appropriate amounts.




Now if I could just run a step...