Running Plan Review Greg McMillan 10K: Intermediate-Advanced (Speedster)

Does it build you up smartly?

A good plan changes what it asks of you as the weeks go by. Training built in blocks, each with its own focus, produces better race results than holding one steady load. A good plan also eases off now and then, because a lighter week every few weeks lets tiredness clear so your body can absorb the work.

McMillan gets both right. The plan opens with hill repeats, moves into threshold running, brings in goal-pace miles from week 5, and adds sprints, fast repeats and time trials from week 8. Weeks 4 and 8 have less running, and the last 2 weeks taper down to the race.

But the reasons stay in the back of the book. Each day on the schedule is a short code with numbers, so many hill repeats of so many seconds, and nothing about what the session is for. The stages aren't named either, so it's hard to tell when one block has ended and the next has begun. McMillan explains every kind of workout, at length, in another chapter. A runner who wants to know why Thursday matters has to turn back and find it there, the morning of the run.

Does it protect you from injury?

Not as well as the rest of the plan. Two gaps sit right where injuries tend to start.

Strength comes first. Strength training substantially lowers injury risk in sport, more than stretching does, yet this schedule has no strength sessions at all. The book recommends it and includes a sample routine, with a full program online. Where to fit it around Thursday's hard running and Sunday's long run is yours to work out.

The second is week 5. Sharp jumps in weekly running raise injury risk, and mileage alone undercounts the strain when the extra running is fast. Climbing back up after a lighter week is normal. What sets week 5 apart is that it's also the plan's heaviest week, and it brings the first goal-pace session (6 or 7 single miles at race pace) and the first long run with a fast finish in the same 7 days. Week 2 does a smaller version of the same thing, adding 4 or 5 long threshold repeats as the running goes up. Research suggests many running injuries start suddenly, often after a training error in the week before, rather than building slowly. In week 5, using Monday, Wednesday and Friday for rest or cross-training is the simplest protection you have.

Week 8 deserves a warning of its own. It has fewer minutes of running, but it carries 3 hard sessions: short sprints on Tuesday, 10 to 12 fast 400-meter repeats on Thursday, and a time trial or 5K tune-up race on Sunday. It's a lighter week for your easy days, not for your legs, so don't plan it as a rest week.

The rest of the plan protects you well. Hard days never land back to back, and the book has a full chapter on recovery, along with the early signs of trouble and what to do when they show up. Small aches that linger between runs appear to raise the risk of an injury that stops you running, so that guidance is worth reading before week 1.

What happens when you miss a day?

The plan has no rule for a missed week, but a missed day barely matters.

Three days a week are already open, so moving a run is usually easy. If Thursday goes wrong, the book lets you move the session or skip it. Wednesday or Friday can usually take it, as long as it doesn't end up the day before or after another hard run, which matters in weeks 8, 11 and 12, when Tuesday is hard too. McMillan writes most runs as a range of minutes, and the book tells you to run the low end when you're tired. Workouts are described as efforts, using 4 training zones McMillan adapted from his mentor David Martin, so a slow day doesn't throw off a pace you were supposed to hit.

But past a day or two, you're on your own. Nothing says what to do with a lost week: run it again, or pick up wherever the calendar says you are. The book implies that the long run and the hard day matter most, but it never lists what to drop first when a week gets short. Those calls land on you, at exactly the moment you'd most like someone else to make them.

Will it get you ready for race day?

A 10K is run close to your threshold, the strongest effort you can sustain for roughly an hour. Gains in threshold come from training at that effort, and race-pace work pays off most when race pace sits near one of the body's thresholds, as 10K pace does for most runners.

That's why the goal-pace sessions are the strongest part of this plan, and where a Speedster's quickness learns to last 6 miles. In week 5 you run 6 or 7 single miles at goal pace. By week 11 it's 3 repeats of 2 miles. Every other week in between, the total stays close to a full 10K while the pieces get longer, so by race week, holding goal pace for 2 miles at a time feels familiar. In weeks 8 and 10, a short time trial at goal pace, or a 5K tune-up race, checks whether the goal still fits. Then the running eases for 2 weeks, and easing off for 1 to 3 weeks before a goal race tends to make runners 2 to 6 percent faster.

But the long, steady threshold running stops after week 6. From then on, the plan leans on goal-pace miles and faster repeats instead. For a 10K, the goal-pace work covers much of that ground, so this gap is small. The long run also reaches its longest early, at 90 to 105 minutes in weeks 3 and 6. After that, Sundays alternate between 90-minute runs with a fast finish and time trials, so for the last 6 weeks no run goes past 90 minutes. The endurance you carry into the race's final miles is built by week 6 and then held, not stretched any further.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes. Few weeks look alike, and nearly every kind of hard running a 10K calls for shows up somewhere.

Over 12 weeks you'll run hill repeats, long threshold repeats, goal-pace miles and fast repeats of 400 and 800 meters, along with sprints, a fartlek and 2 time trials. And about 82 percent of the running is easy, which matters just as much, because easy running is the base that carries harder training and helps your body adapt to it. Mixing easy running with clearly hard sessions builds endurance better than a steady diet of medium effort, and this plan draws that line clearly.

For a Speedster, the short, fast work is the standout. Strides run through much of the plan, building from 10 bursts of 20 seconds to 20 of them by week 6, then 8 longer ones of 30 seconds. Hills, sprints and fast repeats fill the gaps. Short, fast efforts like these make runners more efficient, so the same pace costs less, and that's exactly the edge a runner built for speed wants to carry through 6 miles.