Last Week in Workouts

When I started training, I was always curious about what other people were doing. A lot of athletes don't share their training plans, which made it difficult to gauge my training versus the typical. I have found a few resources like this national team training plan from 1998. The University of Michigan also provides a lot of information about their training programs.

Still, information is remarkably difficult to find! Perhaps athletes and coaches believe that they'd be giving away trade secrets, but I've come to realize that it's less about what training you do and more about actually doing it. Moreover, this training quite personalized and wouldn't have the same affect on me as my competitors. Finally, I would hope that my competitors have access to enough information that they don't need my training plan!

Certainly, there are weeks I would rather not share. I have bad days and bad months, where I do fewer workouts than I should or split workouts into pieces just to cajole myself into doing them. So when I say this was a typical week, keep in mind that a typical week also usually involves some departure from the training plan.

That being said, last week was a fairly typical week of training. Some weeks we do more long, slow work; last week was primarily focused on speed work in preparation for a 6k erg test this coming weekend.

HR = heart rate, followed by range in bpm

2:09 splits = average 500 meter time over the workout

Monday:
AM - 2x50 minutes (HR167-174); 2:09 splits, burned ~1000 calories
PM - endurance lift, 3 times through: [[120 bench pulls, 20 leg presses, 20 leg lifts, 15 bench press, 120 bench pulls, 60 squats, 20 sit ups, 8 pull-ups, 2' back bridge]]; burned ~ 700c

Tuesday:
AM - 2x1500m at max HR; 1:55 splits. plus 30' warmup, 10' cool down. burned ~550 calories
PM - 75 minutes (HR149-167); 2:16 splits, burned ~700 calories

Wednesday:
AM - 3x10 minutes (HR180-189); 1:58 splits. plus 15' warmup, 15' cool down. burned ~650 calories.
PM - 60 minutes (HR149-167); 2:11 splits, burned ~600c

Thursday:
AM - 75 minutes (HR149-167); 2:11 splits, burned ~ 750c
PM - endurance lift, burned ~675c

Friday:
AM - 2x40 minutes (HR167-174); 2:07 splits, burned ~850c
PM1 - 60' run on treadmill, 6.5 miles, burned ~500c
PM2 - 75 minutes (HR149-167); 2:14 splits, burned ~ 700c

Saturday: I had a long day of job training, so I ended up post-poning the workout to Sunday morning

Sunday:
AM - 10km (HR180-189); 2:07 splits, burned ~625c
(we do this workout pretty often, and none of us did very well on it; we clearly had some residual fatigue from the week)

NOTE: I used calories burned as a measure of relative work load: the more calories, generally the more difficult the workout. I have actually stopped counting calories from a food intake perspective, because I find the numbers to be so inaccurate and inconsistent.

What does your training plan look like? Are you ever curious about what other people are doing?

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