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If you’ve been following this prep series, then you know I’ve been using AI to create my training plan.
I’ve shown you one AI based workout already, but today I thought I’d do a high level overview of what my training looks like week over week.
And make sure you stay up to date because I’m going to do a deeper dive into some of these training sessions over the next couple of weeks just like I did for the Spartan Circuit.
But for now, let’s jump into a week in the life of a Spartan Beast.
My Optimal Training Schedule
So a Spartan (or any OCR race) is a challenging endurance event to train for. Particularly because it involves both running and obstacles.
And while training strength for the obstacles is crucial, the majority of this race will be a trail run.
For example, let’s take two athletes:
Athlete 1: a sub-par runner but can crush every obstacle within seconds
Athlete 2: slower at obstacles and may fail a few, but they are a very fast runner
In a Spartan race, Athlete 2 will win everyday of the week.
However, that doesn’t mean you can go in as a solely fast runner and expect to win because the competition are all fast runners.
All this to say, my ideal training schedule involves training both running AND strength.
As such, my typical week looks like this:
Morning: run
Afternoon: gym session
Repeat that every day Monday - Friday and throw in a long run on the weekend and that is my week.
How AI Crafted it All
Running Plan
For my morning runs, I’ve utilized AI to fine tune a typical half marathon plan for me, but with a twist. The Spartan race is not on pavement and it’s not flat.
I was able to get AI to adapt my road half marathon plan to include some trail running on the Black Mountain Crest trail near our house.
This is essentially an all uphill trail, so it’s perfect for training.
I’ve played around with frequency as I overdid it at first (which I’ll get to in a bit). But now I’ve landed on 2 days a week on the trail.
The first day I train on the trail is always a Tuesday track quality session.
These running workouts usually involve shorter intervals like 2 minutes at 5K pace. So instead of that on a track, I’m doing it uphill on the trail. And instead of a rest recovery, I’m sprinting back down the hill.
If you are interested in that, I’m going to do a deeper dive into my Trail Quality Sessions in a couple of weeks.
Beyond that, I also try and do one of my midweek long runs on that trail, although I usually end up doing a run a minute, walk a minute to make it up the mountain.
Strength Plan
The strength workouts are where AI is truly shining. You’ve already seen a deep dive into my at-home Spartan Circuit training day.
But in today’s article you’ll also see I have an at-gym circuit day, a ring workout, a full body day, and a lower body day.
But we’ll get to that in a second!
Transitioning To Trail Running, Gym Routines, Circuits, Impact
I mentioned earlier that I might have gone too hard and fast into the trail running training.
The reason I say this is that after my deep dive into the trails, my body did start to feel awful. Easy runs were sluggish, my hip was hurting, and my Garmin said I was very unproductive.
We shouldn’t let technology dictate how we feel, but it was odd Garmin was so skewed.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized it could be a few factors:
First, I was dealing with seasonal allergies at the time and they hit me pretty hard.
Second, trail running uphill inevitably means a much slower pace. Even grade adjusted paces are slower than a normal easy run on pavement. This may have thrown Garmin for a loop.
But one big thing I learned is that the trails can be deceiving. They are softer than pavement and so you don’t necessarily feel the impact force on your body as much. But it’s still there. Particularly from pounding downhill at a purposeful effort.
And if the impact didn’t affect your structure, it surely affects your central nervous system. Add on top of that all these new training stimuli in the gym with more structured strength work and 2 high energy high heart rate circuit sessions each week.
Well, in hindsight, it’s no wonder my body felt like it was hit my a truck.
The week I am writing this, I feel a bit better, so hopefully my body is beginning to adapt. But if I had to start all over, perhaps ramping trail running and everything else up a bit slower would have been the better move.
Week in the Life
Alright, now that all of the learning is out of the way, I’ll actually give you the day by day workouts that I am doing.
Keep in mind that the exact running workouts change week over week, along with distances, but the ideas are relatively the same.
The key to any workout plan is progressive overload. This is where each week, you make things ever so slightly harder. You add 2.5 or 5 lbs every week. Each time you add, you don’t really notice, but after 5 weeks, you’ve added 25lbs!
The same is true with running. Week over week you can add more mileage or more intensity or both. And eventually you’ll hit your peak for the race you are competing in.
Anyways, here if what my training looks like for a given week:
Monday
Morning run:
5 miles easy plus some hill sprints if I remember.
Afternoon workout:
This is my ring workout day. The ring workout is primarily an upper body focused day since we want the legs to rest.
This is the day we are typically not at home and so rings are easy to travel with and setup anywhere.
The workout consists of 3 rounds, each round is a superset (meaning I do all the exercises in the round without rest) with a 1 minute rest in between sets.
Each round I do for 3 sets.
Round 1:
Top position hold: 25 seconds
Pull-ups: 8
L-sit: 12 seconds
Pull-ups w/ a thick grip attachment: 5
Round 2:
Dead hang: 1 minute
Round 3:
Dips: 10
Ring rows: 10
Push-ups: 10
Tuesday
Morning Run:
Today is the trail quality session day, I’ll go more in depth on this in a later article, but here is the general workout:
25 minute warmup or 1 mile up the mountain. It’s around 1K in climbing.
1-2-3-2-1-2-3 min @ 5k effort and a ~400m sprint back down the mountain in between reps
25 minute cooldown running back down
Afternoon Workout:
Today’s workout is a total body strength workout. I try to hit things that are important for OCR and trail racing efficiency.
So there is an added emphasis on pulling strength, grip strength, and the lower body muscles needed for climbing hills efficiently.
Max pull-ups: 1 set
Trap bar deadlift: 4 sets of 5
Superset scap pull-ups: 10
Weighted pull-ups with fat grip: 4 sets of 5
Superset dumbell lateral raises: 12
Dumbbell step-ups: 3 sets of 8 on each leg
Beater Bar Monkey “Treadmill”: 3 sets of 12 rungs
Final Superset Finisher: 3 sets
Kettlebell swings: 15
Dumbbell farmers carry: 1 minute
Hanging leg raises: 12
Wednesday
Morning Run:
5 miles easy
Afternoon Workout:
Today’s workout is my at-gym circuit and it’s a killer for sure.
I’ve been targeting 3 rounds, but moving it to 4 now.
Each round consists 7 exercises and the goal is to move to each one as quickly as possible and rest as little as possible between rounds. I usually warmup for a half mile run on the treadmill and then move right into round 1:
Treadmill hard effort: 400m
Dumbbell farmers carry: 1 minute
Battle rope: 30 seconds
Burpee pull-ups: 10
Wall balls: 10
Towel pull-ups: 5
Plate pinch farmers carry: 1 minute
After all 4 rounds I usually do some shoulder mobility work too
Thursday
Morning Run:
Track tempo session
1 mile easy warmup
5 miles @ half marathon pace
1 mile easy cooldown
Afternoon Workout:
Today’s workout is my heavy leg strength day.
I like to do 2 heavy weight low rep compound lifts, then 2 medium weight medium reps on the machines, then end with a superset of 2 lower weight higher rep finishers.
Here is the splits:
Back squat: 4 sets of 5
Superset hanging leg raises: 10
Romanian Dead Lift: 4 sets of 5
Superset front should raises: 12
Hamstring Curl Machine: 3 sets of 10
Leg extension machine: 3 sets of 10
Super Set Finisher: 3 sets
Bulgarian split squat: 12
Wall Balls: 15
Friday
Morning Run:
Midweek long run on the trail
This is about 120 minutes of trail running which means summiting Celo Knob and running back down. Around 8 miles total.
Afternoon Workout:
Today is my at-home circuit that I shared a few weeks ago.
But I’ll share the split again. The idea is to do as many reps as possible in a 45 minute window. To progress, I just up that window.
Each round consists of:
Hill sprints: 1 driveway
Sandbag walking lunges: 12 on each leg
Monkey Bar Beater Bar: 12 rungs
Rope Climb: 3 climbs
Punching Bag: 30 second round
Plate Pinch Farmers Carry: 1 minute
Burpee Broad Jump: 10
Spear Throw: 1 (missed penalty is 15 burpees)
Sprint back down the hill and repeat
Saturday
Full Rest Day
Sunday
Long run day. This is something like running 13 miles with a progression so I end faster than I started.
Closing Thoughts
I’m working on a lot of weak points in this training like my overall strength, grip strength, compromised running, higher elevated heart rates, and more.
Because of that, it has been discouraging at times to see my paces slip on runs back on pavement or the track. But I know it’s all part of the growth.
Another thing I’ve learned a lot is that by adding all these different training stimuli, it hits the central nervous system pretty hard.
When all you do is run on pavement, overtraining is easier to see because your structure starts to break down first. You see injuries and things pop up before your body starts to have too much fatigue.
Symptoms I’ve seen of some overtraining are when you have a hard workout and your heart rate doesn’t rise. If you have a hard effort, you want an elevated heart rate. If it won’t rise then your system isn’t responding.
Another one is underlying fatigue where my legs feel like jello. Again my heart rate is low, my aerobic system is not being hit hard, but my legs just don’t want to budge.
Having these kinds of things happen is discouraging and makes me feel like the training isn’t working.
But then I’ll rest some, I’ll see gains in the gym, I’ll have a run that feels good again, and I have to remind myself it’s all part of the process.
I’ve heard this analogy with investing, but it’s true with any growth in life. Our growth is kind of like a yo-yo going up a mountain. Sometimes the yo-yo is at the bottom and it feels discouraging, sometimes it’s at the top and you feel like you could conquer the world. But every time it goes up and down, you are still taking more steps up the mountain. So even at the lowest point, you’re still higher than when you first started.
The same is true with running and any aspect of life. Growth is almost never linear. We have peaks and troughs, but we are always moving up.
The truth behind running with joy, once again, is that we must find joy in all trials. just like James tells us:
“Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing” James 1:2-4
This means sometimes the greatest growth we see is actually on the other side of those troughs.
That’s my hope for this prep. We are about half way through and I’m hoping that maybe a lighter week, a few more weeks in the trenches, and then a taper will put me on the mountain top in Cincinnati.
We shall see!
Until next time, run with joy!