Bluegrass Endurance: Training Plan

I am going to start a series on training and what I am looking at doing this coming
year. I have not laid out my plans yet as still hoping to get some work details figured out as may have a lot of travel early in 2026 and if so puts a different bent on what I do and when. While I do keep a bike in So Cal for when I am there I do not have my trainer and with work hours when in So Cal it is hard to ride but on the weekends. So we shall see.

To start this let me give a little background on where I have been training wise as have been at this for a long time - 52+ years running and 44+ riding. I will say just because someone has been at something a long time does not make one an expert - or for that matter just because someone has been at it for less time than yourself does not make them know less. Maybe more important is experience and by that I mean being in the trenches and not just having been coached but also: Training, Coaching, Studying and - yes - failing. If we are honest we often learn the most in failing. Also, what needs to be added into this is ones understanding about aging and how that affects how one must train. Bottom line it there is a lot to go into good coaching and setting out training plans.

So some background on me, have shared this some before and here is post I did some years ago in 2018 - A Little About Me ( https://bluegrass-runner.blogspot.com/2018/06/interview-tuesday-little-about-me-tony.html ) - so have for sure run and raced much more since then but some basic background. At the end of day I for sure have been at this - running and riding - for a long time but still learn more all the time and look forward to learning more. As I get older I find the learning is even more important as when younger you have lots of room to cover up errors but not so much when you are 66, as I am.

With regard to training when I started running in 1973 it was all about miles, the long run, hills and intervals. Pretty much the basic training plan that many have today. What was not talked about much was rest as from when I started in high school as a freshman through college I am pretty sure I ran hard most the time - but again for a while youth covered for me. Only real issue in High School was getting sick, from over training and some lung issues, and shin splints for 3 years but that came mostly from being about 5’-2” when started high school to 6’-3” when done and in that time running more and more.

In college the injuries started even more as I made the error of going to a D1 school - University of Arizona - and being way over my head. Contemplated going to Pima College or Central Az College where George Young, 3rd in the 1968 Olympic Steeplechase coached but let the fact I could go to a D1 school cloud my judgement. I may have had a road PR for 5K of 15:00 or so and maybe once got under 31:00 in the 10K but most all the guys I ran with in college were much, much, much faster. So every workout was a race and you can only get by on that for so long. The training regime was much the same as in High School but with way more miles - upwards of a 100 a week. Ended up with a stress fracture at some point and knee issues which in the end drove me to riding. So you could say up to this time my training modality was Run long and Run hard and do whatever interval I was given and not ask questions - hey I was a walk on so you just don’t ask.

When I moved to cycling I rarely ever did a formal training plan other than long rides and short rides and get in some climbing. My best event was the TT as fit my size and mentality to just ride hard for as long as I could. In about 85’ I got second in the Az State 25 Mile TT and about 6th in the road race. The road race was at Mormon Lake in AZ up near Flagstaff and a good group of us went from the gun and while my memory may not get this all right I do know we did about 110 miles at altitude in under 4 hours and was a hammer fest. Unfortunately in our breakaway there was the best rider in the state, Dvid Milne, and a few of his teammates so while I tried to get away before the sprint it did not happen and got about 6th.

1985 Marana Road Race

In all this I still never did any intentional intervals but rode a variety of rides that covered long easy rides, long hard rides, lots of climbing rides, hard rides with constant efforts and rides with lots of sprints. Funny part when I look back is those rides - were more than one a week - are pretty much what the well known Shoot Out in Tucson is today - not sure when it went from a ride where we just hammered each other from the teams in town to what it is today but the gist is the ride basically covered a lot of areas so never needed to do specific workouts.

All that to say that after running in college I very rarely ever ran or rode workouts with specific distances repeated and instead just trained. Sometimes easy but most of the time riding and running in what today would be known as Mid to High Zone 2 with maybe some workouts gaining into Zone 3 and 4 - but only due to how everyone else was riding and not intentionally. Not sure if I ever did much of what one might call easy rides and the idea of stopping for a coffee on a ride made no sense to me - just needed to gitter done:) What this all did was keep me pretty strong and pretty much in shape but likely never where I could have been and for sure did not peak as I might have been able to do so had a great riding or running race just as they came not as planned.

So now I come to where I am now and at 66 dealing with more and more niggles and often just not racing as I would like even though often have a great training ride. The aging part is the hard one as my mind wants to think I can do what I did when I was 20 but my body says - You Wish! I also know that I need to be more specific/intentional in my training and that is a hard one for me. I am one that just likes to train but likely that is what leads to getting sick and having lots of niggles - again youth covers up a lot of indiscretions in training. With needing to add in some other aspects to work on muscle groups that do not get a lot of work running and riding I need to be even more careful how I do things, when I do them and at what intensity. To do this I need a plan but I while I could just get a coach - may still - I want to be able to know why I do what I need to do and be able to pass this on to others.

Over the past weeks I have listened to a number of podcasts and what I find there is nothing really new but just some nuances that come into play and some tech that can be used to verify things. I freely admit that to me tech is interesting but also see it as a trap. What I like to use the tech for is to co-oberate what I feel or sense but also to maybe be able to figure out what I need to do to get faster and stay healthy - let me reverse that - STAY HEALTHY & GET FASTER. The order to me is important as I think if one does it the other way around staying healthy may not take place.

In listening to some podcasts I came across Dr; Stephen Seiler who while from Texas has lived in Norway for quite a while and has done lots of study of the Norwegians. You may have heard of the “Norwegian Method” as people have noticed how they have been excelling in Triathlons particularly but also running and even riding so people want to know why. Will cover that in another post but let me say it is not one thing and truthfully it is not magic - yea they may use some tech to drive what they do but that is not really the secret.

Back to Dr. Seiler - his main area of study was how well trained athletes trained and what can all of us learn and the main take away was we need to go slower more often and for a greater portion of our training. What was seen was roughly an 80/20 split with 80% being slow - will talk about zones and such later as those need context - and then 20% fast. This model is coined Polarized Training - when you go easy you go easy, not sorta easy - when you go fast you go fast, not sorta fast. The other popular training paradigms are the Periodization Pyramid where you have your easy base then a good deal of hardish work topped by a little hard speed work. These are close and I think there is cross over - again more on specifics later. There is also aspects of training called “Sweet Spot” ( https://www.trainerroad.com/blog/sweet-spot-training-everything-you-need-to-know ) which is more of a workout but done more often in the grey area between tempo and threshold and popular for those with limited time. The other training option that is out there that is often touted for the time crunched athlete is doing more High Intensity Interval Training (HIITT) where you do much more higher intensity stuff then some easier but it is generally equally spread and again popular for the time crunched athlete. I will look at all of these as I go though my look at training for the year. As a note I do think one can successfully intermix many of these principles but key in all this is rest and easy work - an issue I will discuss as I go through all this.

Po - Polarized, Py - Pyramid, Sw-Sweet SPot

What I have learned so far is that maybe others will gain from Periodization or 50/50 (HIIT) training or even a good amount of Sweet Spot but I need the structure that I think Polarization can bring with a focus on rest. I say this as I listen to others talk about this and what is found is that most people migrate to the middle to high Zone 2 and camp there with maybe a spurt here and there faster and maybe a slower workout but largely in the middle. The data seems to show that while one can get better in this Zone 2 area and many are pushing it as the key to progress, for me it is the Danger Zone as I, and I am guessing many others, migrate to the top of Zone 2 where you don’t get the full benefit of Zone 3-4 but also don’t get the rest of Zone 1 and low Zone 2. Thus my goal in the coming year is to work to be very aware of Zone 2 - may have a workout or ride venture there but it needs to be a visit not an expended vacation. I need to work to ride slow when resting - Zone 1 are not junk miles - and ride hard when I need to ride hard in Zone 3-5.

That has been a quick look at where I will be going in future posts on this. There is so much to cover but the basic premise is we need to workout easy more often than when we train hard. Add to that when we train hard it needs to be hard and not just hardish. Let me add one quick note - again will touch on this more later - one of the complaints with Polarization is that it is hard to do on a time crunched week (7 days) but I am not so sure as while you are better off with more time - slow - it is till a good idea to work to watch your percentage of effort that is hard. Let me add to this that with training, if you are like me, you think in 7 day cycles but where is it written that training plans are limited to 7 days - how about 14. I am going to do this as with riding and running I tend to try and cram both into a week and in the end likely do not get the maximum benefit from either. But if I go to 14 days and look at it that way I can better split things up - let alone allow for more rest from hard days. For the time crunched athlete that maybe has 5 hours a week to train if you look at it as 14 days you then have 10 hours to work with. Please keep in mind when looking at your time to workout that you need to realize that other activities in life count toward your fitness. Working in the yard, playing with your kids, or in my case grand kids as have 15 of them 6 and under - now they are a workout, and other activities count. It is all time spent moving so count it as part of your active rest as well as your work if you venture to harder efforts - like maybe cutting wood. When we neglect things other than what we seem to count as “actual” training we also set ourselves up for burnout and injury.

More to come.

Here are some videos on trianing