Running Plan Review Runner's World 8-Week Beginner 5K Training Plan

Does it build you up smartly?

The shape is simple. Three weeks of easy running come first, with a hilly run added in week 3. In week 4 a speed day arrives on Thursday, and from then on the week hardly changes: an easy run, a hilly run, the speed day, and a long run that adds half a mile every week or two. Easy work first and faster work after is a planned change of emphasis, and training that shifts like this tends to beat training at one level throughout, though the gain looks small. It's the order New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard built his training on. His training "incorporates all paces sequentially, starting from your easy relaxed aerobic runs and progressing to your fastest possible speeds," explains the foundation named for him. This plan runs that order in 8 weeks: easy running first, a hilly run in week 3, and short bursts of speed from week 4. The plan doesn't name its stages, but they're there.

Some of the daily notes explain themselves. After the 3.5-mile long run in week 2, the plan tells you that "you can feel assured that you'll be able to go the 3.1-mile distance on race day." The hill notes say longer climbs help build your finishing speed, and ask for "light, quick steps" on the way down. The speed day is fully written out too, from the warm-up to the bursts to the cool-down. But its notes never say what those bursts are building, or why they start in week 4.

The bigger gap is the finish. Weeks 5 to 7 look just like week 4, and none of them asks you to hold the effort you'll race at for more than a minute at a time. The week 7 long run doubles as a dress rehearsal for race morning, but it's a long run, not a run at race effort. A plan that turns toward race day in its final weeks gives you that practice before the start line, and this one saves it for the race itself.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mostly. The plan avoids the classic mistakes, but it leaves out two protections newer runners need: a lighter week and strength work on the schedule.

Sudden jumps in running load tend to raise injury risk, most clearly a single run that goes well past your longest of the past month, and this plan never has one. That's the classic beginner mistake. Amy Serna, a self-described non-athlete who set out to run a marathon within a year, paid early on for "too much, too soon" with shin splints and three months of cycling, before she followed a printed plan to a marathon finish line. This plan's steps are far smaller. The long run grows half a mile at a time, the speed day arrives without a jump in mileage, and Thursday's hard work sits 2 days away from Saturday's long run. Every speed session opens with an easy half-mile warm-up and closes with an easy half-mile cool-down.

Week 6 carries the plan's one warning. On an optional day, it tells you to ease up if you feel "overly sluggish" or notice "twinges, aches, or pains." That's the right instinct, because early evidence, from footballers rather than runners, suggests a low-grade ache that hangs around may raise the odds of an injury that stops you running. But it appears once, on a day many runners will skip.

The first missing piece is a break. From week 1 to week 7, the weekly total barely dips, and the first real lighter week is race week. A plan you follow on your own needs some relief built in, since load that piles up without it tends to raise the risk of injury and illness, and coaches usually place a lighter week every 3 to 5 weeks. The steps here are small, which softens the cost. But one easier week around week 4 or 5, before the long run reaches its longest, would give you that relief.

Strength is the bigger gap. The plan calls strength training "an excellent choice" for your cross-training days, but it never schedules a session or says what one should include. Strength training substantially lowers the risk of injury in sport, more than stretching alone. For a newer runner, whose blood and muscle energy systems tend to improve within weeks while tendons and bone take longer to catch up, it's the protection this plan needs most and leaves to you. "When you start running, your cardiovascular system adapts quite fast," writes exercise scientist Hunter Bennett. "However, tendons and bones adapt on different scales and different timelines." By week 5 your breathing may be ready for more than your shins and ankles are, so a short strength routine on one of the open days is worth adding yourself.

What happens when you miss a day?

A plan proves itself in the weeks that don't go to plan: the cold, the late nights at work, the trip. What helps then is knowing which runs to protect, and how to pick back up.

This plan offers little of either. It names its starting line clearly and begins from the running you already do, the starting point coaches generally recommend, though no study has tested it directly. Its two open days let you choose rest or cross-training by how you feel. But nothing says what to do after a missed run or a missed week: repeat it, skip ahead, or slide a run into an open day. And with 4 runs a week, it never says which to keep if you can only manage 2. Most runners would hold on to the long run and the speed day, but the plan treats every run as equal and leaves that call to you.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes, if your goal is to finish strong. Less so if you want to race the whole way.

The distance won't be a worry. The long run passes 3.1 miles in week 2 and reaches 4.5 by week 6, so on race day you'll be running a shorter distance than you've covered for weeks. The plan suggests treating the last long run, in week 7, as a race-day rehearsal: run it at the time your race starts, try out the shoes and clothes you'll race in, and use the course if you can. Race week drops to 3 short runs, so the race comes at the end of an easier week.

The gap is effort. A 5K is run close to the hardest effort you can hold for the whole distance, and this plan's only fast running comes in 1-minute bursts. Nothing in the 8 weeks asks you to keep a hard effort going for 5 or 10 minutes, let alone for most of a race. Steady runs at race effort and threshold runs, at the hardest effort you could hold for about an hour, are different kinds of training, and either is a reasonable way to prepare. This plan has neither. So on race day, the second and third miles will be the first time you've stayed at that effort for long.

For a first race, that's fine for many runners. The plan asks you to treat the race as "a victory lap" for your training, and its race-day advice is sensible: start slowly and build. Olympian Jeff Galloway made the 1972 U.S. team at 10,000 meters (about 6.2 miles) on a 90-degree day in Seattle. "Many of the runners had started too fast, and I did not," he later wrote. "I found myself catching up to the stragglers, passing one, then another." Start your 5K a notch slower than you think you could go, and you're more likely to be the one passing people in the last mile. But if you want to see what you can really do over 3.1 miles, this plan won't teach you how that feels.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Enough to keep the running balanced, not enough to keep it interesting.

The balance is right. More than 9 of every 10 miles are easy, which is how most coaches build a newer runner's base. Tuesday's hilly run changes the ground under you, if not the effort. And Thursday's bursts add a little short, hard work on top of the easy running.

But Thursday never changes. From week 4 through race week, you run the same session 5 times: same bursts, same recoveries, same 2 miles. If you want a yardstick, that's one, since you can compare the fifth time through with the first. If you want something new, it may feel stale by week 6. Bill Pierce, a co-founder of the FIRST training program, learned that on his own runs. "I used to run the same speed workout week after week," he recalled. "After a while, I would start to dread that workout. Speedwork is much easier when you change it around a lot." This plan won't change it for you, so any variety on Thursday is yours to add.

Strides are missing too: a handful of short, quick pickups at the end of an easy run. They're a low-cost way to practice running fast, and they would break up the easy days without making them harder. "I do strides on my easy days after my run," said trail runner and author Morgan Sjogren. "This reminds my body to run fastest at the end of a workout or race, practice good form, loosen up any tightness and prime my body to run fast the next day during my workout." This plan never asks for them, so a handful after Monday's easy run is yours to add. There are no hill repeats either. The hilly runs stay at one steady effort from bottom to top.