Alright, welcome back for the next part of this series on training plans for beginners. Just to recap, first, you determined your starting point, or current fitness level, and then you set the goal you are going to work for. Now it’s time to fill in the middle with all the incremental steps you need to take to go from start to finish. This is the most detailed and technical part of creating the plan.   If you simply search “5k training plans” you will not have to look very hard to find results.  From beginner level Couch to 5k programs to Jeff Galloway’s elite training plan, you can find a calendar that lists what to run, when to run, and how much to run. But have you ever wondered, “How do they come up with this?”  Experience? Yes, in most cases a coach knows how to develop a quality training plan through years of competing as a runner before becoming a coach themselves. But you don’t have to be that elite athlete to know how to construct a training plan.  All training plans for distance running events will be comprised of the same basic elements  These basic elements are periodization, safe workload progression, and goal specific workouts. If this is your first training plan you don’t necessarily need to build out a plan with all of these details but it will help you understand the general structure and progression of the plan.   Periodization refers to the systematic planning of training. The idea behind periodization is to reach “peak” performance at the most important point in time; usually this is a competition but it can also just be the personal goal line you set for yourself. It is a progressive cycle that divides the conditioning program into different phases of training, each with their own goal. You can adjust the timeline for these based on the duration of the plan you are creating. There are 3 different cycles:    • macrocycle  • mesocycle  • microcycle  A macrocycle is usually a year-long plan made up of three phases: preparation, competitive, and transition. The preparation phase usually lasts 2/3 to 3/4 of the macrocycle and is where the majority of the training takes place. The competitive phase is the period of time where the main event or goal race takes place. And finally, you have the transition phase. This is where rest and time off come in to play.  The athlete is getting ready to “transition” to the next macrocycle by resting and healing their body.  A mesocycle represents a phase of training that last anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks.  It is a period of time with a specific focus on the same type of physical adaptation. For example, building an aerobic base or increasing muscle mass would be considered a mesocycle. These different mesocycles are then combined to form the macrocycle.  The microcycle cycle refers to the individual and daily activities that work towards the goal of the mesocycle. The microcycle typically last a week and would include elements like a long run or hill workout.  Your daily workouts are the individual sessions that make up each week’s microcycle. Each session will have one or more physical activities that addresses something you need to move forward, such as strength, endurance, speed, power, etc. Looping back to the introduction, all of these cycles combine to constitute the process that you are committing yourself to. These are the paving stones on the road to achieving your goal.   You will see that these cycles slowly add more and more to the workload. If done correctly the body will adapt to the increased workload and you will see an improvement in performance.