Reply To: Help with planning my weeks
Ottercoach,
I’m guessing that you are a club coach as you stated “my oldest training group”
In determining where to start a season we go back to last season’s best times and that becomes our baseline and that will usually put them “faster than last year at this time”. This usually allows them to dial in very quickly to pace and you don’t have to modify the “outs” and within a few weeks times will need adjusting (faster). I have done conversions from LCM to SCY/SCM and it’s always a mess. You can run a check and see. Look back on last SCY season and compare split times or averages which ever you want to use from 100s and 200s, etc. to what they are currently holding on sets. If you have the majority of the group travelling slower then you probably need to make adjustments. If they are faster then you are in “hog heaven” 🙂 and can create all kinds of teachable moments!
The “variety” issue seems to be a very common thread with coaches and the USRPT system. We have a saying “that if you want to be entertained. Then stay home and watch TV”. This is about human performance and that requires standardization of work so that the coach and athlete can compare performances from season to season, year to year and over a career. Its tedious work (record keeping) with requires a high level of commitment from the coach and the athlete. But once the coach and athlete understand how the sets relate to race performance it’s not boring, stale or any other adjective used. Once the athlete understands what it is that they are doing they will make comments during a set that “Hey, I made 3 more than last time” or “do you think I can go X in the X as I’ve been holding X on whatever set’” We use if you “max out the numbers” two times in a row it’s (call it mastery) time for pace adjustment, we call it “you get a dot” they will say “that’s twice, I get my dot” and boy you had better be ready to hear about it if you didn’t adjust their pace the next time.
I’m not trying to be mean. But this is not “plug and play”
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