52 Lives

Runner’s World provides a tool called Smart Coach on their web site. It’s free to use, no registration required and you get a training program in less than a minute. As the advertisement states:

A free, interactive tool that combines science, mathematics and 40 years of collective running wisdom to bring you a proven, individualized training program.

I like the idea of a tool that gives you a personal training plan based on your current condition and your goals (from short distances to a full marathon). For starters, you are asked to enter your recent race time. I haven’t run any races, so I just entered my one mile time there (the one I measured during Cooper test, 4 laps). Since I’m aiming to run 3000m in Cooper test, I set my training goal to be 5K. I wonder if it means 5 kilometers or 5 miles, but this was the closest distance to my goal.

The next questions make your training program even more personalised. In my opinion these questions are the “meat” of this tool. You are asked how many miles per week you train now. Smart Coach uses it as the beginning point and sets the training lenghts according to that value. Depending on your next answer, how hard do you want to train, the weekly mileage is increased by 10-15 % every week. If you choose “very hard” the pace will also increase dramatically.

The final touch to the plan is scheduling. You choose your long-run day and set the desired length for the training plan (from 2 to 16 weeks). This is great option if you’re training for a competition and have a limited amount of time. Smart Coach optimises the exercises to fit your schedule.

So if you don’t have a training program yet, I strongly recommend Smart Coach.

UPDATE: Links added

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