Training Periodisation for Runners
What is training periodisation? Today we will delve into what it is and how to use it to benefit your running training so that you can better prepare for your goals.
Periodisation, is essentially the idea that you can achieve a more long term sustainable approach to training and get more benefit from your training by varying your workload through the year. Training periodisation also allows you to hone your training for specific goals. It factors in base training, periods of harder work and downtime after big goal efforts. You overload the body over a planned cycle of training, then let it recover, then repeat. The body can adapt well because it is never held at high stress for too long. With your long term plan laid out into phases, it’s also much easier to focus on one stage at a time and your overall goals can seem less daunting because you’ve periodised your overall training and made it much more manageable to to process.
Planned peaks and troughs allow you to perform and recover in line with your personal needs
Most people will likely inadvertently follow a loosely periodised approach to training simply through training for an event and then recovering afterwards, but structuring it is where the magic begins to happen.
Periodisation is the approach that all elite athletes use, but there’s no reason that we mere mortals in the ordinary running population can’t emulate what the elites do and fit it to our needs and schedules.
What you need in order to start periodising your training;
Clear goals
A regular running schedule
Some knowledge of run workouts
Ideally at least a couple of years of running experience
If you don’t have all of those things, then don’t worry! You can just come back here when you do! Everyone moves at their own pace and if you’re newer to running your main focus only really needs to be on getting that consistency locked in.
The Key Elements
The difference between how the average runner approaches their training and a structured, periodised approach, is that periodised training will work in cycles. We’ll start to throw around some more specific terminology from here on out, but it’s all fairly easy to understand.
Progressive overload in important for improving your running, but maintaining the same intensity and volume for too long will have diminishing returns and eventually lead to burnout and injury
Cycles
Macro Cycle – this refers to an entire racing season. For example, this could be your cross country season, it could refer to the summer racing season, or it might refer to your build up for a spring marathon. A Macro cycle can cover multiple months worth of training and when your seasons are will vary depending on your goals. You may only have one season each year, or you may have multiple. A track athlete will often have an indoor racing season at the start of the calendar year, then they will dip off and begin building for their summer outdoor season, then they might dip down again before either building for the cross country season or simply using the winter for base training. In this example the athlete might have two or three seasons.
For most of us, our racing year is not as structured as this, but the summer is more populated with races than most of the rest of the year, whether it be road, trail, fell or open track meets. This means that many of us do still effectively have a summer season not too dissimilar to elite runners!
Think about how you normally approach your year when it comes to running races and it will likely be relatively easy to see where your highest training loads end up being. Once you’ve got that sketched out you can start to think about where your training cycles should be.
Meso Cycle – this refers to a specific training block within a Macro Cycle. For example, this might be the build up to a 5km race, or it could be a four week block where you’re specifically working on speed work during the Macro cycle for a marathon.
For shorter races distances, you might have lots of different meso cycles within a season to prepare for specific efforts, but for longer events you might find that there’s less variation between your meso cycles. Again, your goals will dictate exactly what the pattern looks like but the key thing is to ensure that high training load isn’t being sustained for too long a period of time.
Micro Cycle – This usually refers to a week of training. This part of the plan has the most detail in it as this is where you ensure that you’re getting enough training stimulus but also balancing recovery on a more day to day basis.
How to use this?
It’s a lot of information to process! Below is an example of what a year could look like for someone running two goal marathons with a couple of potential half marathon tune up races.
As you can see, on the Macro scale, the plan is fairly generalised. You can get a good sense of the whole picture and easily see what you’ll be working on each month and where your macro cycles are. It’s not too overwhelming because there’s not too much detail when you look at it like this. You can clearly see you’ve got two four month Macro cycles to build up to each marathon, then a couple of months after each Macro cycle to recover and ease back into base mileage.
Below is an example of what a four week month within that marathon build might look like. We’ll use the speed training Meso cycle as an example.
Here we can see a bit more detail, but it’s still a relatively general overlook of what the Meso cycle contains. You can see the key elements in the training block each week. Your mileage and the basic details of your key runs are there so you know what you’ve got coming up over the Meso cycle, but there’s not so much detail that it might feel overwhelming.
We know we’ve got a deload week at the start with lower mileage and one tempo workout, then our mileage goes up a bit with interval workouts and hill workouts for two weeks as well as structured long run workouts, then the mileage jumps up again a bit but our long run in the last week of the cycle week is a more relaxed effort. This enables you to have a good sense of what’s coming up while still letting you focus on the details of each Micro cycle. Knowing when your deloads and easier efforts are is important as during the higher mileage and higher intensity points in a training cycle. We might need those things to look forward to to help our motivation and mental strength.
Below is an example of what a Micro cycle within this speed phase might look like.
It’s clear to see that we have a lot more detail here, but it’s manageable to absorb because we’re only needing to focus on the details of one micro cycle and we’ve not got several weeks of runs and workouts laid out in front of us.
Putting it all into Practice
A lot of this could still feel like a lot to process, but you can handle it in stages. Autumn and winter is a good time to be starting to plan out the next year of races. During this period of the year, grab a planner or calendar for next year and pencil in some goals or races. Once you’ve done that, all you need to do for this stage of planning is to block out however many weeks you need for your training block before that goal or race. Try to have enough space between goal events to allow you some deload time where you can just run base mileage and maybe run races purely for fun. Once you’ve done that, you can leave it for a little while.
As the new year approaches it’s then worth sitting down and plotting out your first macro cycle. Put down the broad strokes of what you need to do each month leading up to the first goal event of the year. Once you’ve got the broad strokes it’s then time to look at the key elements of the Meso cycles within your first Macro cycle.
For this part, you need to have an idea of;
Your goal mileage/time on feet for each week
How many workouts you want to do each week
What kind of workouts you want to do each week
The structure or intensity of your long run each week
How many rest days you want each week
As it gets closer to new year, plan out your first Meso cycle in more detail by filling in the Micro cycles within it. Your plans may need to adjust as you progress through the year so you only need lock in the plan for the next meso cycle as you approach the end of the current one. It’s worth planning out your next block of Micro cycles at the same time but once you’ve written them out, you can put them aside until you actually need to look at them. Your Micro cycles will be affected by illness, injury and life events, so while some people like to plot out months of training ahead of time, it’s not necessary and you can write out your micro cycles once you’re more certain what you’ll be able to handle physically and mentally within your next Meso cycle.
In Conclusion
By approaching your training in stages like this, it makes it easier on both your mind on your body as you’ll have planned downtime to recover from big efforts and you’ll have a clear idea in your head of what the broad strokes of your training look like over the coming months. As you meet each goal you can then shift your gaze to the next one and begin planning the finer details.
Hopefully this has given you an idea of how to periodise your training by using training cycles so that you can gain as much benefit from your time as possible!
Train well,
Jess
