[maxf]

I posted this in another thread, but perhaps others are interested and it is worth its own thread

A few questions with the 24 week plan:

1) Each week has 3 main aerobic workouts called “Run/Hike”, “Aerobic Threshold Run/Hike” and “Hike on hilly terrain” – Should I be aiming for any difference in intensity between these workouts? Is it ok to push into Z2 in one of them?

2) For the “Hike on hilly terrain” should I carry any weight? If not and I have the choice between running / hiking, is it preferable to run? When hiking my heart rate is typically well below AeT except on the uphills, whereas running I can hold a higher heart rate downhill.

3) lastly my local hill is only around 150m high, it has lots of terrain though and a typical 1.5 hour run will include 750m of up and down. Is this “Hilly” enough? 1.5 hours is about the most boredom will allow on this hill although it does seem to involve more elevation my other option

Alternatively nearby are bigger hills which I can access at weekends suitable for up to 4-5 hour runs. here a 3 hour run/hike gets around 1300m up and down. Is this suitable for the sunday “Hike on hilly terrain”?

For any of the “Steep uphill hike” later in the program should i do laps on my hills, or suck it up on a stairmaster?

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on October 10, 2017 at 9:16 pm #6377

Max:

Thanks for putting this up. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

1) Each week has 3 main aerobic workouts called “Run/Hike”, “Aerobic Threshold Run/Hike” and “Hike on hilly terrain” – Should I be aiming for any difference in intensity between these workouts? Is it ok to push into Z2 in one of them?
These are all meant to be in the basic aerobic metabolic realm, so Z1-2 range. The intensity can be in the Z1 range for he longer workouts and get up into Z2 on the shorter ones or on the uphills on hillier workouts. If you have a high basic aerobic capacity (AeT) then you will need to do most of this base training in Z1 (Z2 will be too hard for a high % of the base training). If your AeT is low then pushing into Z2 more will be helpful and speed the aerobic development.

2) For the “Hike on hilly terrain” should I carry any weight? If not and I have the choice between running / hiking, is it preferable to run? When hiking my heart rate is typically well below AeT except on the uphills, whereas running I can hold a higher heart rate downhill.
If you are in the Transition Period or early Base Period weeks then don’t carry weight. Or at least not much more that you need to an extended hike such as water. As the plan progresses there will weight uphill hikes designated as such. If you can stay in Z1-2 then running is going to give you more bang for the time spent. So run the flats and hike the hills. That’s what we mean when we say run/hike.

3) lastly my local hill is only around 150m high, it has lots of terrain though and a typical 1.5 hour run will include 750m of up and down. Is this “Hilly” enough? 1.5 hours is about the most boredom will allow on this hill although it does seem to involve more elevation my other option
Yes, this is hilly enough.

Alternatively nearby are bigger hills which I can access at weekends suitable for up to 4-5 hour runs. here a 3 hour run/hike gets around 1300m up and down. Is this suitable for the sunday “Hike on hilly terrain”?
Yes this sounds like a great place to do these workouts.

For any of the “Steep uphill hike” later in the program should i do laps on my hills, or suck it up on a stairmaster?
Real hills always beat a stair machine. You’ll want as steep a hill as you can find though for these. 10-15% minimum grade. 20+% is better.

[maxf]

maxf on October 15, 2017 at 11:55 am #6396

Thanks for the replies:

one more question –

I have a spare week from where I start my plan to where I head off climbing in April. I was thinking to use it in December where it nicely fits between the 8 weeks transition period and 8 week base period. It also nicely puts my rest weeks where I want them and keeps the high volume weeks where I have trips etc.

I also have a weekend free where the extra week lies, and was hoping to go away winter climbing that weekend. This could be a nice mix of aerobic work and technical training.

Obviously it depends but any rough guide to the maximum volume one could do on a weekend like this, if you took a few extra easy days either side of it?

Obviously its not ideal from a continuity point of view, but equally you gotta go climbing when you can every now and then.

So it would look like:

Transition week 8
Extra week (climbing trip on weekend)
Base week 1 (modified to probably take the first 3 days as recovery)

[Frantik]

Frantik on December 1, 2017 at 4:57 am #6948

I also got this 24-week plan with that nice offer last week.

My question is:
If I want to add 1 climbing day per week in there (1-2 hours indoors/outdoors) what would be the best day to do it?
Could it go on the recovery run day?

Also should I add the stregth sessions TSS manually according to guidelines from Scott on another post here?
They become then TSS with an asterisk in TP. The aerobic sessions are all calculated as hrTSS after uploading workouts.
I assume they all count towards the weekly CTL/fatigue calculation??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on December 1, 2017 at 8:19 pm #6963

Max;
Adding extra weeks is always a good thing. You just can’t have too much base. If it is an unusually big volume week like a big climbing trip that’s fine. Back off the week before and give yourself a recovery week when you get home then launch back on to the plan. Should not be any problem. These plans are best guess and nothing ever goes exactly as planned during anyone’s training plan.

Frantik:
Yes you can use the climbing days on days when your legs are getting a bit of recovery, assuming you are not talking about climbs with long approaches. We manually enter the TSS for strength and it is included into the CTL.

Scott