Running Plan Review Greg McMillan 5K: Intermediate (Combo)

Does it build you up smartly?

A good plan has a shape you can feel. Easy running builds the base, harder work arrives in stages, and the weeks ease off now and then so the body can absorb what it's done. Plans built in stages produce better races than plans that hold one steady load, and the lighter weeks are when the training of the weeks before turns into fitness.

McMillan's plan has that shape, with one twist. The lighter weeks fall in good places: weeks 2, 4 and 8 ease off, and race week drops further still. The two hard days, Thursday and Sunday, always have two easier days between them. The twist is the order. Race pace repeats come first, then step aside for hills and threshold work, then return from week 7. A Combo runner, about as quick as they are durable, gets both sides worked in turn.

But the schedule never says why. Each day reads as a bare prescription, such as 6 to 8 repeats of 1,000 meters with a short jog, with no word on what the session builds or which stretch of the plan you're in. McMillan explains every workout in a chapter of its own, so the reasons exist. You just have to go and find them.

Does it protect you from injury?

In some ways well, but it leaves two gaps that matter: strength is missing from the calendar, and new kinds of hard work arrive together in the weeks the running grows.

Injuries tend to follow change. Sharp jumps in weekly running raise injury risk, and many injuries start suddenly, often set off by a training error in the week before. The weekly total doesn't capture everything, either, because pace, intensity and terrain all add stress that mileage alone misses.

That's where this plan stumbles. Its miles climb gently, but its new sessions don't arrive one at a time. Hills come in week 5, as the running bounces back from the lightest week so far. Week 6 is the biggest week of the plan, and it brings two new sessions at once: 6 to 8 threshold repeats of 1,000 meters on Thursday, and the first fast finish run on Sunday. Your legs meet both for the first time in the same week they're running the most.

Strength is the other gap. The book includes a sample routine and points to a full program online, but none of it is scheduled, so how often and on which days is your problem to solve. Fitting it in matters, because strength training lowers the risk of sports injury more than stretching does, and two sessions a week brings most runners the performance gains of strength work as well.

The hard days also come without a printed warm-up. The book prescribes one in its workout chapters, but you have to remember it, since the schedule won't remind you.

The book's best protection is what it teaches. It explains how to read the early warning signs and what to change when they appear, and it gives recovery a chapter of its own. That's useful, because a lingering ache that runners call a niggle appears to raise the risk of a full injury. Easing off when one shows up, rather than finishing the week as written, is sound practice on any plan.

What happens when you miss a day?

When life gets in the way, the question is whether the plan has room to absorb it.

Within a week, this one does. Monday is always off, and Wednesday and Friday are open in most weeks, so a crowded week can shrink to 4 runs without breaking anything. Those open days also give a missed workout somewhere to go. A Thursday session you miss can slide to Friday and still have Saturday's easy run between it and Sunday. The book backs that up: it tells you to take the low end of each range when you're tired, and to move or skip a hard workout on a day your body says no.

But the plan stops helping once the trouble is bigger than a day. It never ranks the week's runs in order, so in a short week you choose alone which one to keep. The book implies the long run and the hard days come first, but there's no list to lean on. And there's no rule for a week lost to illness or travel. Whether you repeat it or pick up where the calendar says is left to your judgment.

Will it get you ready for race day?

A 5K is run close to the hardest effort your aerobic system can sustain. That makes race pace practice unusually valuable, because training at race pace pays off most when race pace sits at one of the body's physiological thresholds, and 5K pace sits near one.

This plan uses that well, and it will have you ready. The goal pace repeats grow from 400 meters to 1,000 by week 10, the jogs between them grow too, and each session adds up to nearly a full 5K at goal effort. Alongside them runs a thread of threshold work, a comfortably hard effort a step below 5K pace, in several forms. Threshold fitness is built by running at threshold, and the plan gives you a steady run, threshold repeats, a tempo run and a pair of 10 minute efforts to build it.

The time trials are the moments to circle. In weeks 8 and 10 you run a mile or two alone at goal pace, or a short tune-up race instead, and find out whether the goal you set back in week 1 was right. If it felt easy, you can aim higher. If it felt out of reach, there's still time to adjust before race day.

Then race week cuts the running to less than half of the biggest week, keeps a short fartlek on Thursday, and leaves your legs fresh for Sunday. Easing off for one to three weeks before a race improves race performance, and this taper gives you that freshness when it counts.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes. Few Thursdays look alike, and from week 6 Sunday joins in.

Easy running broken up by sessions that are plainly hard builds endurance better than a steady diet of medium effort. This plan follows that pattern closely. About 84 percent of the running is easy, and the hard days are clearly hard: goal pace repeats in four lengths, hill repeats, threshold repeats, tempo runs, runs that finish fast, short sprints, time trials, and a fartlek in race week.

That range suits the Combo runner the plan is written for. Speed work and stamina work take turns, so neither side of your running is left alone for long. And for a runner who loses interest when every week looks the same, there's always something new on Thursday, a different question asked of your legs each time.