0k 2 5k Plan

The plan. SIGN UP HERE

There is 1 club run on a Thursday Evening at 19:00 and 2 more suggested solo sessions penciled into the training program. The second run can be swapped for some form of aerobic cross training if that suits you or your schedule better. All the non club sessions come in around the 30 minute mark which includes the warm up and cool down. This is an intentional restraint placed on the plan to make everything 'do-able'. As you get fitter this can be extended, but always increase slowly.

The weekly (rolling 7 day) structure is:

Run 1 (Q1). Club sessions are on Thursdays and is intentionally the more challenging and longest session of the week.

Run 2 (or Cross Train*). The easier and shorter of the sessions, we're just trying to do some aerobic work without tiring you out and forming the exercise habit. This will usually be a repeat of the previous weeks session

Run 3 (Q3). The 3rd run is initially a repeat of the club session then becomes a bridge to the next club run ie increases time spent running or lowers the time in recovery so there's less of a jump in difficulty each session.

*Cross Training. Simply doing non running exercise. Whether that be traditional gym work, cycling, Zumba, yoga, walking, cow wrestling or extreme free climbing. If you're replacing a run session with cross training try to mimic the amount of planned work ie swap 30 minutes running for 30+ minutes of cross training. If you're adding a cross training session ensure it doesn't impede on your running e.g dont do 30 minutes of squats on a Tuesday leaving you capable of bar propping on Wednesday instead of running.

The detail of what we're doing will be added to the below plan each week as we progress. The plan will change based on how people are progressing.

Caveat: The 0k 2 5k plan is the suggested days to be doing things because of our main run being a Thursday, but the reality is that life isn't so easy to structure. Swap things around but keep an eye on your training load ie how much you're doing over a rolling few days, you want that rolling 7 day average to keep on a gentle upward curve (as you improve time can be swapped for distance, pace and other overly complicated markers). If your schedule means you have to do back to back runs that's fine but make sure the quality run (harder run) is done first. Don't be concerned about slowing down on the 2nd run or having to do more walking than planned. If you have to drop a run, drop the recovery run (run 2) as doing nothing is indeed recovery, just not very effective at improving fitness. The days rest prior to club night is intentional so you're fresh as a sprinting daisy for club night, so best leave that as a rest day if you're re-jigging your schedule.

Our route. We will start with a lap of the cricket pitch / playing fields whilst we warm up and usually finish with a walk up a hill to get back to the start as the cool down. We'll start by using the river for our main route to avoid most of the hills...initially.

The Detail.

The warm up will be a brisk walk. At this stage the aim is to wake the body up, nothing else. On club night we'll do a few dynamic stretches etc before we start which you can repeat on your own. The cool down again is a 5 minute walk with some light stretching involved. All running is to be done at YOUR EASY pace. Yes your breathing will be heavy and you'll get a sweat on, but you should be able to go quicker if a rabid dog/cow/llama pops out. To labour the point e.g if you're doing a 1 minute run you should finish it feeling like you could carry on for another 2 minutes. This is not track interval training, the intention is not to hit your maximal at any point. We are very specifically doing low aerobic training and building muscles to allow you to do more training. We're not training for a 100m we're training to get round your first 5km. When you have a good aerobic base you can start thinking about the higher intensity style of workouts, this is the icing on the cake..we need to make the cake first.