Three Principles of Creating a Long-Range Plan

hen I look back at a year’s worth of training and racing for any athlete, inevitably, one common theme emerges. The athletes who reaped the most success during the year were also the athletes that planned out their training 9-12 months in advance. This does not mean that they laid out every single last mile, but these athletes at least had a high-level overview of aspects like how their mileage would ramp up, when to do intensity and when to incorporate more vertical in their training. I have always found that if you get the general flow right, the details tend to take care of themselves. To evoke a common phrase from another one of my coaching colleagues, “The notes don’t have to be perfect if you figure out how to arrange the entire symphony.” This planning process is so important that I easily spend 25% more time communicating with athletes during the months of December, January and February as races fill the calendars, and I