[00:00:00] This is a runner who follows a training plan. Exactly. Yep. They got injured. This is a runner who knows why and how their training plan works. Yes, they’re running their best times. In this episode, I’m gonna show you how to create a training plan like a chef instead of following directions like a cook.
[00:00:16] Why it’s so important for running your best time. A free training plan that’ll let you adapt your life to your training and know how to actually put the ingredients into a training plan and a free email course that will get you the skills to self-coach yourself so you can run faster, farther, easier, with less effort.
[00:00:34] I’m Daren D Lake certified Run Coach, and over the last 15 years I figured out I had to self-coach myself to a sub three hour marathon, an 82 minute half marathon, and a sub 17 minute 5K. 10 hour Ironman did that many years ago, and my goal is to help 100,000 other self-coach runners run their best times, live their best running life by getting 1% better variables right each day, week, month, et cetera.
[00:01:01] Let’s get into the episode. Most runners follow trending plans like line cooks follow recipes blindly without understanding why. They’re just like, I, I’m getting paid to do it. It’s above my pay grade. When something breaks, they panic and they find a new plan. Chefs understand the ingredients and the principles that make any plan work.
[00:01:20] When something needs adjusting, they know exactly what to change. The sauce has too much heat from the hot peppers. Cut it with butter. The chicken breast is too dry. Add olive oil to bring. Moisture and richness, you’re adjusting on the fly because you know the first principles of why something is how it is.
[00:01:37] But before you can build anything you need to know three key ingredients where you are right now, your fitness level, not your pace, what you’re trying to build. You can’t improve everything at once, and the ratio that keeps you healthy, more easy running. Then you think if it’s possible for you to do easing running.
[00:01:54] The thing is, is that most runners skip straight to the recipe. They download a plan, ignore the actual fitness level. They try to build five things at once, and they run all of their runs in the gray zone. And we aren’t just cooking here, we’re chefing. So let’s go deeper into ingredient number one, and we’re gonna use.
[00:02:11] Who we are as people. We’re not gonna change who we are. We’re just gonna have better systems and better processes. Alright, so ingredient number one, know where you are. ’cause your fitness level matters more than your pace. Every kitchen, it has different equipment. A beginner runner’s body is a small stove top with one or maybe even two burners and advanced runner’s body is a six burner range.
[00:02:31] With a double oven, you can’t cook the same meal on both. Let’s get into your training age, which is your current fitness level. So a beginner who runs three months consistently might be. More trained than someone who’s jogged casually. For years, a 2006 study in sports medicine found untrained runners can boost VO two max with easy 40 to 50% effort.
[00:02:52] But well-trained runners need high intensity work to keep improving. Same workout, different adaptations. ’cause it’s a different person. This is based on races you’ve done, how long you’ve been running consistently, how fit your base is, et cetera. And this determines what your body can handle, not current paces and definitely not your race time.
[00:03:10] Think of it like how long you’ve been in the kitchen. Here’s what a lot of runners don’t get. You’re limited by where you are experience wise, but once you get this, you can figure out what equipment you can use and what type of training is right for you. So lemme break down everything from beginner all the way up to novice, intermediate, and advanced runners.
[00:03:26] Beginners, so about zero to six months, the running consistently, your only job is to not get injured, don’t die, and build the habit of running strength training and getting generally fit. If you come from a non-active place, like I said earlier, you, you can’t do all your runs easy. You can’t do 80% runs easy because you’re not fit enough.
[00:03:44] To do. You need to get fit to get fit run two to three times per week. Most runs should feel as conversational as you can. That’s you’re easy running. I would probably have you do a lot of run walk. If I was coaching you. Here’s a question you can ask. Can you do some faster running? Yes. I’d say if you can handle it and you’re used to it, you could do one very short speed session per week after the.
[00:04:06] Six to eight week mark. I I don’t want you to do any speed sessions until your body gets used to the pounding of the payment ’cause it’s an injury right around the corner. If you’re not ready, you’re beginner. A runner. Don’t stress about heart rate zones. Don’t stress about paces. Uh, don’t even worry about carbon shoes.
[00:04:22] New runners struggle. To run easy anyway because the aerobic system bodies is still getting used to this weird thing called running. You’re doing micro jumps and moving forward. The goal is to focus on showing up, not pace consistency. It beats intensity every single dang time. Having a training plan is a great start, but too much structured speed work will probably overwhelm you.
[00:04:43] When you should just be running. You’re learning to use the stove. If you still following training plans, like the instructions from HelloFresh or Blue Apron meal delivery service, hoping you don’t have missing ingredients, when you’re done, stop right now. You need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, and that’s exactly why I built a free email course that breaks down the fundamentals of self-coaching.
[00:05:03] The thought process around fitting your run. To your life, how to avoid injury and burnout, and how to stay consistent when life gets crazy. Get it at the QR code here, or the link in the description or the show notes. Let’s get back to the running kitchen and talk about novices. So novices I’d say are about six months to one to two years, 18 to 24 months.
[00:05:23] You can handle three to four runs per week now without injury or burnout. Here’s where the 80 20 ratio starts to matter. 80% of your runs easy and then 20% hard ’cause you’re running more often. Most of these runs. Can be easy and they should be easy. You should have enough fitness to be able to slow down and run easy.
[00:05:40] Your aerobic base is your foundation. Everything else gets built on top of it, and you start building up the aerobic base and you can add one day per week where you pick up the pace slightly. Again, a speed interval day so you can pick hills tempo, run fart. VO two max. Uh, but you wanna keep the rest of your running easy.
[00:06:00] You’re learning to control the heat on the stove. Next up is intermediate, two to four years. Now you got multiple burners on the stove going. You got pot simmering and things sauteing and stuff about to boil over. Your body can take four to six runs per week with two to three key workouts, a long run, a temple session, an interval VO two max workout, et cetera.
[00:06:20] Structure matters here. You’re not just running, you’re building specific systems. Aerobic base, lactate threshold, VO two max, even anaerobic top end speed. The 80 20 ratio, 80% easy, 20% hard. It becomes your operating system, it’s your Bible. You’re managing the whole kitchen like a sous chef. So you’re not the top chef, you’re the sous chef.
[00:06:39] You’re the one right below. Okay, so now we got advanced. So this is your four, five plus years runner. You’re running seven or more times per week with some days doing doubles at this level, precision matters because the more precise you are, the more returns you get on your inputs, and just big volume actually isn’t as relevant ’cause you have history behind you.
[00:07:01] The 1% variables stack up, like sleep quality, nutrition, timing. Recovery protocols, periodization within the week, month, seasons, years. Some weeks you might run 90% easy and 10% hard, even 95% easy, 5% hard, especially in the preseason base season. Huge volume periods. This is where you can stack it all up. Other weeks when you start getting towards your race, build about 10, 12 weeks out from the race, you might do 70% easy, 65% easy, 30, 35% hard.
[00:07:31] You’re fine tuning the recipe to make a five star Michelin meal. Is it five star or four star? I don’t eat at fancy restaurants. Alright, so the actionable step for ingredient one. So all of your different phases and levels do this now. Write down your training age. Be honest, that’s your starting point.
[00:07:48] Now you know what? Tools you can work with. Okay? You know where you are and the tools you can use. Now let’s talk about what you’re trying to cook. And many runners try to improve five things at once. They want more aerobic base and they want faster threshold, and they want better VOT max and they want more top end speed and stronger legs and you know, big body and lose weight.
[00:08:05] That’s not a recipe for a five star Michelin meal is it? Is it five stars? It’s not a recipe for fancy meal. It’s a recipe for disaster. Enter ingredient number two, progressive overload. So we want to build, maintain, and connect. Steve Magnus ProCoach and great running thought leader breaks training into three simple decisions.
[00:08:24] You want to build, you wanna maintain, you wanna connect. Build means you pick one to two qualities to improve this training block. You hit them every seven to 10 days. You push slightly and progressively. This is progressive overload the most. Fundamental principle in training for running strength and even life.
[00:08:40] It’s very 1% better because all you do is add a little bit more stress each week, more reps, faster pace, longer intervals, combination of all three, and your body adapts. You get stronger. And without progressive overload, you’re just repeating the same workout and wondering why nothing’s changing. So you just do the same, I don’t know, five kilometer, three mile loop at the same exact pace every single week.
[00:09:00] You’re like, how come I’m not getting faster? Because you need to actually do the progressive overload. But it does come at a cost though. If you do too much, uh, without. A recovery week or recovery period, you also can burn out and get injured, so you gotta be smart. The cook mistake, I’ll do base speed tempo.
[00:09:14] Hills long runs all at once because more is better and more is more the chef approach. I’m building aerobic base this block. Everything else is in an introductory or maintenance phase. What can you build? Aerobic base lactate threshold VO two max. So maintain means everything else gets just enough work to not disappear about two thirds of your normal volume every two weeks.
[00:09:36] So that’s how you maintain in a real world example. So if you wanna be training for a 5K best time, if you’re building an aerobic base this season and your goal is to run your best 5K in three to four months, you still need to maintain speed. So while you build the base, you can also do strides twice a week and a short sharp VO O2 max session, like six to eight.
[00:09:56] Five, 400 intervals at your current 5K fitness with half the rest just enough to keep that burner on low so you don’t lose any of that top end, uh, aerobic fitness ’cause VO two max is top end aerobic and a bit of the anaerobic speed and the turnover, the leg turnover. And then connect. The last thing of the Steve Magnus kind of playbook.
[00:10:14] It means you don’t jump from one face to the next overnight. You bridge the intensities. You don’t go from base building to race pace in one week. You transition it. Temple runs get split up for me. I like to do this with runners also that I coach into Broken Temple runs early in the season, so rather than a 20 minute temple run outta nowhere and you haven’t done tempo in three months.
[00:10:34] How about we do three by five minutes or three by six minutes? So we got 18 minutes of work and we have a one minute really slow shuffle in between. We get our bodies used to running at that speed or we do shorter. VO two max intervals and then we grow them longer. So instead of doing four by five minutes, which is quite a lot at VO two max pace at current 5K pace, we will instead do 30 on, 30 off.
[00:10:56] So 30 seconds at probably faster than 5K pace, maybe closer to two mile, one mile current fitness, and in 30 seconds rest And repeat that 10, 12 times. Do about one or two sets of those and then we make those longer. See the progression. Alright. Actionable step for you to do right now when you’re training, write down what you’re building in your next three to four weeks.
[00:11:16] That’s a block. One thing and maybe two, just focus on one if you can. Not five. Alright, so you know where you are. You know what you’re building. Here’s the ratio that keeps you healthy while you build it, and while most runners are doing it backwards. Ingredient number three, the ratio. Remember this, to run farther and faster without breaking down, you need to run easy more than you think.
[00:11:38] After you get fit. So once we get at a beginner stage and we go to novice, ’cause beginners, you’re all gonna start yelling at me. You do this in the comments all the time, I love you. But you go, this doesn’t apply to me because my heart rate goes a million when I start running. And I’m like, okay, well you need to get fit to get fit and then we can start talking.
[00:11:55] So you need about three or four months of consistent running, run, however you want without burning yourself out. But I’m talking more now to the novices, intermediates. ’cause you will turn into a novice very quickly after you run for six to 12 months. Alright, so the ratio you wanna aim for again is 80, 20, 80% easy, 20% hard.
[00:12:11] Norwegian researcher, Steven Seiler, studied elite endurance athletes across multiple sports and found a consistent pattern about 80% of training at low intensity, 20% at high intensity, and the athletes who tried flipping that ratio. They got over training burnout and no faster improvement. What that actually means, 80% of your weekly mileage equals zone two.
[00:12:29] Easy conversational pace, 65 to 75% ish max heart rate. That number can shift. It is not an exact, so you, uh, run science nerds that love correcting me, that it can be 78% for some people, 80%, it might be 73% for others. Just do test out there to check that out. The VDOT calculator is your best way to do that.
[00:12:50] Get it up top. I did a whole episode on VDOT calculator. Or below and it kind of, you plug some numbers in from races and then you can get proper paces and know where you’re at and then you can know your heart rate zones and all that. Alright, and then 20% hard. These are again, temple runs, intervals, long runs, VO two max, uh, race pace, et cetera.
[00:13:08] Why the 80 20 method works easy. Running builds mitochondrial density, the tiny power plants in your cells that produce energy. It also builds capillary density, which helps deliver more blood and oxygen to your muscles. So things state. Easier for as long as possible. This is the general idea behind expanding your aerobic base.
[00:13:26] It teaches your body to use fat for fuel and builds the foundation for everything else. Hard running stress. The entire system enforce adaptation. It raises your lactate threshold, improves VO two max and it builds speed. Endurance. The gray zone, which is moderately hard about zone three-ish all the time, doesn’t either stay here too much and it’s harder to build your base because you don’t adapt without proper recovery.
[00:13:49] The result is. Potentially chronic fatigue, potentially injury, and most likely you don’t get faster. So here’s a cook mistake example. This is someone not knowing what they’re doing. The plan says easy, but I ran faster because it felt fine. I never did a 5K time trial to set my zones with the VDOT calculator, which I talked about.
[00:14:06] You can get the link in the show notes to get that. So I’m guessing, based on what feels right. The chef approach, this is the right one. Easy means zone two. If my heart rate is spiking above 75%, I slow down. I tested my zones. I know my numbers, and I trust the process and the science. The last actual task for you to do right now, track this week.
[00:14:27] By going to Strava or your fitness smartwatch app and check your weekly total. On most apps like Strava, you can get a breakdown of how much time you spent in certain zones add up zones one and two compared to zones three to five. Is it close to the 80 20 ratio? Is it lower? Is it higher? You know what you need to fix depending on where your numbers are.
[00:14:46] Alright, if you’re having already go and get that free self-coaching email course and base training plan at the QR code here. Or link below in the description or the show notes. Alright, now that you know your ingredients, let’s talk about how to avoid injury so that we don’t derail everything. If you’re on YouTube, you can watch the next video down here.
[00:15:01] Or if you’re on another player consuming this, listening, watching Spotify, et cetera, you can go get it at the link in the description or the show notes. Stop cooking, start chefing. Peace.
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