Deciphering Your Training Schedule

By Tory Klementsen

I addressed different kinds of training runs in another article (see the website under "articles" for a review, if you're interested), but now there are other things we need to decipher. We know what the words mean, but what about those numbers?

10.10.10 or Thirds

On some schedules you are going to see numbers like 10.10.10. Now if you're a gardener, you read that as the percentages of nitrogen, available phosphates, and potash in a given fertilizer. If you're a geek (like me) you might see that as a network address behind a NAT router. If you're a runner, though...it has an entirely different meaning.

A 10.10.10 or a 30.30.30 run is the same thing. It's also known as thirds. In a thirds run you break your training run into thirds, in this case three ten-minute segments.

• Segment One: Go out relatively easy for ten minutes. Your RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) should be around a level 2 to start with, working up to a level 3 or 4.
• Segment Two: Ratchet up a bit to RPE level 5-6. Your run should feel a little harder, but not so hard you can't hold a conversation with your running partner (or with yourself, if you are so inclined).
• Segment Three: This segment should be ten minutes of pretty hard running; 7-8 RPE. You're not going all out, but you are breathing hard, your heart rate is up, and you're not going to be able to talk in more than spurts of one or two words.
• Finish the run with a 10 minute cooldown/stretch period for safety.

Interval Training aka 60, 8x2:00 Runs

Interval Training is to help you build your speed and stamina. You'll see it expressed as 8x20 or 60, 8x2:00 as above. That this means is you're going out for a 60 minute run. During those 60 minutes, you are going to do 8 2:00 (two-minute) intervals running fast and hard. You don't do those all in a row, but rather split them up. How you split them is up to you, but a good suggestion would be:

• Start with a 10 minute warm up jog.
• 2:00 hard run
• 3:00 easy job
• 2:00 hard run
• 3:00 easy jog
• Repeat the 2/5 for a total of 8 times
• 10 minute cooldown jog
• Total: 60 minutes

This kind of training helps to do two things. One, it builds your speed on your runs. Two, it helps to teach your muscles how to recover quickly from a burst of effort. When you run a byproduct of all those happy little mitochondrea providing your muscles energy is lactic acid. When lactic acid builds up in your muscles, you get muscle soreness. When you do recovery intervals after hard runs, you let your body "sweep out" (so to speak) the lactic acid. The better your body is able to do this, the faster your muscles recover, and the less sore you'll be after your marathon. Therefore interval training such as this is officially a Very Good Thing.

The other trainings that just say 8x20 is also an interval. However in this interval you're going to break your training run into 8 segments for a total of 20 minutes and alternate easy and hard. Be sure to warm up and cool down and always remember to stretch.

Rate of Perceived Exertion

There are a lot of ways to measure your pace and exertion when you run. If you're a geek (like me) you pay through the nose for a fancy dancy GPS unit that tracks your distance, pace, heart rate, elevation, maps your run, and washes your dishes. (Insert Tim Taylor gorilla grunt here.) If you're not quite as geeky, but are the geek cusp, you get a heart rate monitor and learn about heart rate training, using the monitor to evaluate your exertion and calorie burn based on your heart rate at any given time. If you're just swimming in new details as a runner and can't imagine remembering one more thing out on a run, you can use the RPE scale which is just like it sounds; how hard do you feel like you're running?

The easiest way to determine RPE is using the talk method. In other words, if you are running with a partner and chatting up a storm (like me), you're RPE is probably between 2 and 4. That means you're working, but not really that hard. Your not pushing your muscles too much. That's not a bad thing. Low pace runs are important for building endurance and most of my midweek runs are done at an RPE of about 4 to 5.

Below is a scale of RPE you can use to help you plan your training runs.

• RPE 1-2: Very easy; you can converse with no effort.
• RPE 3: Easy; you can converse with almost no effort.
  
• RPE 4: Moderately easy; you can converse comfortably with little effort.
  
• RPE 5: Moderate; conversation requires some effort.
  
• RPE 6: Moderately hard; conversation requires quite a bit of effort.
  
• RPE 7: Difficult; conversation requires a lot of effort.
  
• RPE 8: Very difficult; conversation requires maximum effort. You might only be able to get out on or two words at a time, if at all.
  
• RPE 9-10: Peak effort; no-talking zone.

You might notice when we're out on our Saturday runs that we often run at about levels 3-5, but hit a hill...bam we're at level 8. All conversation stops! We joke about it, but it's a part of our weekly training! (Besides, we love hills...we bond with hills...hills are our friends. Right?)

As always if all of this is confusing to you, choose your battles. If the run says interval run and you're feeling run down (no pun intended), just go out for an easy run and enjoy yourself. If Thirds are confusing, just do a 30 minute run. You will train better using these different training runs, but you can still finish that marathon by just putting in the miles. It doesn't need to be rocket science...although I bet sometimes you feel like it is!

For more information on what the abbreviations on the training schedule mean, read What Do Those Abbreviations Mean?