Step 04 / 06
Ask your coach to build the plan. Here's what it will build — periodization, in plain English — so nothing it says sounds like jargon.
Weeks of mostly easy volume. Builds the engine everything else runs on. Feels too easy — that's the point.
Harder, race-specific work layered on top of the base. Intensity goes up, volume holds or dips slightly.
Short, sharp, race-pace work. The hardest sessions of the whole plan, but fewer of them.
Volume drops hard, a little intensity stays. You arrive at your goal fresh, not flat.
Deload weeks (roughly every 4th week, load drops so your body absorbs the work) and retests (scheduled check-ins that update your numbers from Step 2 and rescale everything ahead).
Weekly training load across a 20-week example plan. Notice the rhythm: three weeks up, one week down, all the way to a taper.
How much stress a workout puts on you — duration × intensity, in one number.
Your rolling ~6-week average load. Rises slowly. The thing you're building.
Your rolling ~1-week average load. Rises fast, fades fast.
Fitness minus fatigue. Negative = training hard. Positive = fresh — where you want to be on race day.
Easy, conversational effort. Where most of your training time belongs.
Comfortably hard middle effort. Feels productive, builds little. See Step 3.
A planned easy week. Adaptation happens in the rest, not the work.
A scheduled effort that re-measures your numbers so zones stay honest.
Don't like a week it planned? Say so in the chat — negotiating is the feature.