Running Plan Review Nike Run Club 10K Training Plan

Does it build you up smartly?

Not as well as the workouts deserve. The hard sessions are carefully made, but the plan around them has two gaps: it never eases off before race week, and it rarely tells you why a session is there.

Most coaches build a lighter week into every 3 to 5 weeks of training. Tiredness that keeps building with no relief tends to raise the risk of injury and illness, and a runner following a fixed plan on their own needs that relief written into the schedule. Coach Pete Rea, whose runners cut back 15 to 20 percent every third week, admits they often feel "sluggish" that week. "Nonetheless I find the level of workouts is elevated thereafter," he says.

This plan has no lighter week until race week. Weekly running grows from about 11 miles in week 1 to about 19 by week 7, and from week 4 to week 7 it sits near the top, with two hard sessions in every one of those weeks. For a runner used to shorter weeks, that's a long stretch without a breather.

The order of the hard work is sound. The first 3 weeks bring short repeats and ladders between 10K and mile effort. Weeks 4 and 5 add tempo running. Weeks 6 and 7 bring hills and the longest repeats. Shifting the focus from block to block like this tends to work a little better than holding one kind of training all the way through. But the plan never names these blocks, so you'd have to spot them yourself.

Each day also tells you only what to run. Week 2's Tuesday session is 10 repeats of 2 minutes at 5K effort, with longer rests after the fourth and eighth. It doesn't say what those repeats build or why they come in week 2. The guide at the front of the plan explains each kind of run in general terms, but carrying that to the day is up to you.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mileage is only part of what a week asks of your legs. Weekly distance alone misses the extra stress that pace and intensity add, and many injuries that look like slow wear actually start suddenly, often right after a run that goes well past your longest of the past month. A new kind of hard workout, arriving in a week that's already bigger, deserves the same caution.

That's this plan's riskiest moment. In week 4, weekly running jumps from about 15 miles to about 19. In the same week, tempo running arrives for the first time, and it arrives twice: a 25 minute tempo run on Tuesday, and a 10 minute tempo block between 5K repeats on Thursday. Monday's recovery run grows to 40 minutes and the long run to 5 miles, so every part of the week gets bigger at once.

There's also no strength work anywhere, on the schedule or in the advice. That's a real gap, because strength training is one of the better studied ways to lower injury risk in sport. Four-time Olympian Shalane Flanagan, who has a Guided Run in this plan, had few injuries in her career. "I attribute that to being as strong as possible," she said looking back on it. Fitting it in around two hard days a week is left to you.

The plan does several things well. The hard days are never back to back, and each one has an easy day or an open day on either side. Most hard sessions start with a warm up of 5 to 8 minutes. And the source draws a useful line: there's a difference between hurting and being hurt, and if you're hurt, you stop running. That line matters, because a small ache that lingers between runs may be an early warning of a bigger injury, though the evidence for that is still thin. But the plan doesn't say what that difference feels like, or what to do with an ache that sits somewhere between the two. Sports doctor Brett Toresdahl offers one simple test: "If it's in the joint and not in the muscle that's a problem."

What happens when you miss a day?

The plan's idea of flexibility is that you are both the athlete and the coach. It hands you the decisions and gives you good tools for most of them.

Before the schedule starts, an "If You..." section walks through seven situations, from a busy week and a tired body to a terrible run and an injury, and gives a plain answer for each. The plan calls itself a guide and tells you to adjust it to your needs. You can move runs around the week, and the two open days can stay rest days or become easy miles. It also tells you which runs count most: the hard sessions and the long run. And nearly every effort carries a number out of 10, from an easy 4 or 5 up to a 9, so on a day when the chart's paces don't match your legs, you can run the effort instead.

But the tools stop short of the hard calls. If a busy week leaves room for only one of the two hard sessions, nothing says which to keep. If you move a hard session, keeping it away from the other one is up to you. And the paces you read off the chart in week 1 stay put for all 8 weeks. The runner who reaches week 7 is fitter than the one who started, but the targets don't know that unless you go back and read new ones.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. The plan works on each part of what a 10K asks of you.

A 10K asks you to hold a hard effort for a long time, close to the edge where your breathing tips over. Most coaches prepare runners for it with regular running close to that edge, and this plan does too. Tempo runs of 20 to 25 minutes arrive in weeks 4, 5 and 6, and every week from the first carries work at or faster than the effort you'll race at.

The plan comes at race effort from both sides. The tempo runs sit a little easier than it, and the 5K repeats a little harder, while the stretches at 10K effort itself stay short, never more than 5 minutes at a time. Exercise physiologist Kaleigh Ray describes the tempo effort this way: "You should feel like you're pushing yourself but are in more control than you would be during a race." By the end, the race sits between two efforts you know well. Week 7's Tuesday brings 3 repeats of 7 minutes at 5K effort, the longest repeats of the plan, a good test of whether you can hold a hard effort once you're tired.

The long run builds steadily too, from 3.1 miles to 7 by week 6, two weeks before the race. You cover the race distance or more in each of weeks 5, 6 and 7, so the distance itself holds no surprises.

Race week cuts the running to about half, with one short session on Tuesday that builds from an easy jog to a flat out finish in 15 minutes, then two short easy runs before Saturday. A planned drop in training before a race improves race performance.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes, and it's the plan's strongest suit.

Two hard days in this plan rarely feel alike. One week it's 10 repeats of 2 minutes. Another it's a ladder from 10K effort down to a mile, or a continuous fartlek where every burst is followed by an easy jog of the same length. Week 6 brings a session of hill repeats. Through all of it run six named efforts, from a recovery jog to an all out burst, and several sessions finish with a few bursts of 15 to 30 seconds as fast as you choose to run.

The variety sits on a sound base. About four fifths of the running is easy, and mixing mostly easy running with a few clearly hard sessions tends to build endurance a little better than long stretches of steady, moderately hard running. The two hard days never touch, and runners tend to improve more when the easy days stay truly easy and the effort goes into a few hard ones. Brad Hudson, a 2:13 marathoner turned coach, learned that the hard way: "I made my easy days a little too moderate and my hard days not hard enough."

The sessions also carry names, and often an athlete with them: a tempo run with Emily Infeld, another with Paula Radcliffe, a speed run with Sanya Richards-Ross. For a runner who gets bored by the same workout every Tuesday, this is a plan that stays interesting all the way to the start line.