I say I have a 'cunning' plan but what I really mean is a training one. And it's not so much a plan but more of a roadmap to hell for the next 45 weeks.
A plan so cunning that it will paint the crystal clean country air around my local country trails blue with the choir of swearing, that I will inevitably unleash into the ether for the next 9 months. A plan so fraught with danger that my butt cheeks are likely to either be red raw from chafing by week 10, or I will be constantly walking like I've shat myself (though it'll probably be both) for most of 2022.
I've given this a lot of thought and have put together a plan to train progressively for the next 45 weeks until this mega-challenge is complete... And I have to admit, it's pretty fucking daunting.
Now, just to be clear, I'm thinking of this more as a framework for training. There will be injuries, burnout, life events, etc that will throw the inevitable spanner in the works. I accept this. There was through this year, and I dealt with it and adjusted accordingly.
There is also the fact that this is a very heavy plan as it gets into the spring and through the summer months. I may need to alternate hard and easy weeks in order to both recover properly and avoid injury. You may well see this plan change. In fact it's likely to, however we don't know what we don't know yet. And with that in mind I'll work the plan and see how I get on. At the peak of this plan in week 40 I'll be running for approx 17-20hours hours in that training week alone!
I've also added in there times when I'll be on holiday. The most interesting one will be the summer holiday as I'll almost certainly be somewhere very hot, and will need to figure out how I'll run 10k a day when it's 35C (likely need to find an airconditioned gym where I'll be staying or run very early in the mornings). It'll be close to my final taper stretch so this one could well change significantly. But for now I have it as it is.
...and this is what it looks like!
An absolute beast of a training programme covering all 4 seasons. Bear in mind this is just the running. I hasten to add that this is in KM rather than Miles. But to someone like me this is batshit crazy. It's the kind of batshit crazy that actually had me swearing while typing this up. So batshit crazy that I swear I heard my PC tell me that I was fucking mental. But that is not surprising given I'll be running 2359km between now and then.
Mental or not, I'm starting out with this as my framework. It's fraught with back to back sessions. These will increase over time. A lot of these will be at 'recovery' run pace (also known as the 'ultra-shuffle'), but they're important. As you can see from the last two weeks where I have 6x 50km runs in a row. Back to back training is going to be important to get me used to what is to come. That's the mission. That's the objective. The SAS say 'train hard, fight easy'. And that is my plan....
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