I did his plan over the winter for the last few years and I liked it. I didn't do any light week since the goal of his plan is to run 6 days a week at a moderate pace so you shouldn't need a "recovery" week. As far as breaking down the hours, start out low, depending on fitness, and work your way up. I think I started at like 3x25, 2x45-50ish, then 1x70-90 minutes. Then I went to 3x30, 2x60, 1x90ish. After that I would toss in a bit of speed during some of the runs if I felt up to it. I might do this plan again because of how easy it is to get in a 20-30 minute run. But if you need more info others can help or you can search BarryP and get all of his amazing links in his profile.

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From a planning perspective, what do most people do in the offseason/pre-season. *****They take a bit of a break after their last race, some unstructured time then hit it at somepoint near the holidays.

Assuming I do a 6 month base and build and then back off, have people reduced the hours back for a month or two and keep frequency, or have you dropped both? ***** See above


b) I follow a 3 week on, 1 week light pattern of planning. If anyone has followed the Barry P plan before, did you have light recovery weeks and if so, how much did you dial it back on these weeks? *****The 3/1 is a bunch of shit. If you're training correctly you don't need to do this.

c) I’m not sure I can get to 6 days a week frequency, but 5 days is doable. Has anyone had any success on 5 days a week and if so, how did you modify the breakdown of hours? ****6 is better 5 is fine. You could reduce one of the medium runs or drop a short run.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
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Jrielley - Point taken about the moderate runs. Makes sense and sounds like you'd had good results from it.

Dessert Dude - Agree on the time off. I prob do 3 weeks to a month of unstructured training at the end of the season, then do a few weeks of pre-season before base. Probably the same as Base really. But will take your advice.

Interesting point about not believing in the 3 weeks on, 1 week off approach. I've improved over the last few years using this approach, but have to admit I'm thinking of changing, I've just finished reading Matt Dixon's book on training (which is great), and he reckons its not the best approach as well. Was thinking of putting in micro breaks/light days more often and not having a whole 7 days easy every month, A guess my question would be the same for this scenario. IF I put in micro breaks/easy days periodically would I cut back the time and do one of the shorter runs if a long run was planned for that day? Maybe I'm over thinking it...

I have just started this plan and into my second week of it.

For some reason my reading skills aren't great and I misread it so start at 15min/30min/60min breakdown and now on 17/34/68.
Should I immediately dial back the long run as at the moment it's technically too long?

Also, how do people who have done this build in other events and forced time off? For example next weekend when I'm supposed to be doing a long run of 75mins I've got a 100mile hilly sportive on. Should I cancel the long run or just move it and use that day as a short run day or something?

I then have a surfing holiday coming up which I can imagine being fairly messy so not sure how to work running into that. Try and get at least a short run in everyday or just not worry, enjoy the holiday and assume that surfing will keep some fitness?

How often should one test progress or is the progress all about being able to run further each week?

Thanks.

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Blog: http://www.coopstriblog.wordpress.com
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Date: 10/31/2017

The way I structured it was long run on the weekend but if I had something else planned or just didn't want a long run on the weekends I would put it during the week. I don't think Barry says you NEED to do the long run on the weekend I just think he wants you to do an short run or the rest day after a long run. I think the best thing about this plan is knowing you are going to run everyday but if something pops up you can adjust to a different timed run.

And for me, I do not find it that important to get a shorter run after a long run since I am used to running longer on back to back days but that is me, if you are not then adjust plan accordingly. But have fun with it! Get out and enjoy the fall weather! (this is coming from someone who turned my alarm off this morning, but I'll run at lunch, ha)

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I did have good results. It really is amazing what added frequency to running can do to ones fitness. Desert Dude is always talking about how triathletes need to run more and this is a perfect plan for it. Adding in shorter, easier runs adds mileage and helps get more fitness and adaptations. And the fall/winter is a perfect time to do a run block. For me in Chicago, I will be stuck on my trainer in a month or so and waking up and getting to the pool at the butt crack of dawn when it's 0 degrees is no fun. But I can run in any weather, well except for the -37 we had last winter, I did not run in that!

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I've said it a million times that I'm a believer and a example that it works. I even come off an injury in Feb. and by May after a slow build up in mileage, and with virtually no speedwork to speak of, crushed my 1/2 mary PR.

I see it as a great way to pick off the "low hanging fruit" in finding your running potential. But adding mileage is a good 1st step.... later you'll need further stimulus to some more results. But jumping to going a lot of tempo or VO2max intervals when you only running 25-35mpw, to me doesn't normally make a lot of sense.... assuming your not time crunched.


Off season.... I might do something I haven't done in a while and not run for 10-14 days and trust that I have enough base now to come back quickly. A lot of niggling injuries creeping up it seems and I've gained too much weight the last 6-8 weeks tjrough taper and recovery for any running PR's anyway.

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Depends on distance a little, no? Does an Oly tri guy need more than 35 mpw? Or asked another way- would it be better to do 35 MPW with 2 really really hard days (maybe 1 interval and 1 tempo), or 70 MPW all slow?

(People on the ST forget about the shorter courses I think)

Part of the challenge that many have with Barry's "Plan" is they are expecting more of a plan, and I simplify it event further to just taking a few months and, just run.

I find this typical with the triathlon crowd in that they always, want, numbers, and charts and graphs, and very specific direction - when in reality, this is very non-specific training.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

If you have the time, 70mpw all easily will beat 35 with 2 workouts. It's amazing how tons (relarively speaking) of easy miles will make you faster than you'd think it should

I have been thinking to go on a 3 week build program:
week 1: Run focus w/bike
Week 2: Bike focus w/run
Week 3: Run/bike (recovery)

Desert Dude: 2 week build and 1 week recovery.............yes, no?

I agree; I'm from the "no plan can be too simple" crowd and I must admit I was looking for more "plan" when I started reading Barry's. However, I've since realised that although there is a lot behind it, the actually running part seems pretty simple. Which is great because I can never remember or follow anything very complex.

I think you may be right with 35 (or less), Running slow is running slow. I do agree with his point that you never run something one day you can't do the next.

My N=1. This year I spent the early season (Nov to March) trying to have a decent (for me) 70.3 in March. Long story short - I did (for me), but then my short course racing was off. I've struggled to get my top end speed back and every sprint race after was off between 15 - 50 seconds on the run. My one Olympic this year was off about 4 minutes. Go figure...perhaps it was a mental thing as running slow and long didn't hurt nearly as much as running short and fast and I didn't want to suffer? No idea, but I'm going back to shorter and harder and hoping I get my speed (relative as it is) back.

I will just quote from his original post as I'm sure the answer is the same.

The BarryP plan is a simple way for people who aren't used to running everyday, to run everyday (well, 6 days a week). It is a very daunting thing to imagine running everyday when you're used to running less often. BarryP's plan is simple and minimizes the chance of injury.

Another saying is… "Run often, but don't run hard too often".

Get used to running 6 day per week, then start adding some tempo miles to one or two of your weekly.

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What I do: http://app.strava.com/athletes/345699

I'm going t play with idea for the next couple of months. Doing 5 days a week but 7 runs per week. Lots of frequency, but not lots of mileage. Likely top out at about 35 per week.

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http://www.fitspeek.com the Fraser Valley's fitness, wellness, and endurance sports podcast

We'll put. It's unimaginable for mist people to run 6-7 days a week. BarryP's plan helped me do that. Took me from being a good runner to FOP runner. First you get to running 6x week, then 40 mpw, THEN add speed work.

The answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Speaking in terms of tri-training, 70 mow is pretty unrealistic for almost any level (and I only say "almost" because there might actually be someone out there who runs that much while also swimming and biking, but even for elite IM athletes, the most I've seen is about 60 mpw).

But directly to your point, does an ply tri guy *need* more than 35 mpw (lets assume you mean to be the best they can be). It depends on the athlete, but some will benefit from 50-60 mpw, but no, not all of it will be slow.

Having said that, most triathletes would probably do well for Oly's if they train somewhere in the 30-45 mpw range. If you follow through the plan through parts 2 and 3, you'll see that this, in a nutshell, is the path for an Oly athlete:

Phase 1 - run about as much as you can, all of it slow (following the principles I laid out…..gradual increases, 1:2:3 ratios, etc.)
Phase 2 - add one threshold/temp run per week
Phase 3 - this depends entirely on the fitness level of the athlete (explained in the plan), but for the most part, you are doing two workouts per week in addition to your four other easy runs that week.

One thing to add: those two workouts are most definitely not "really really hard" days. I would classify them as "good solid workouts." In general, imagine how hard you can push yourself in a really really hard workout. I good solid run workout, IMO, should generally be about 2/3 of that. In other words, if you can run, say, 10x1,000m at 5K pace with 400m jogs for rest, and that is all you can absolutely do, in reality you should only do about 6-7 of those. Those extra three hard intervals, for *most* runners give you very little in return and just end up beating you up to the point that the rest of the week suffers.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
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Thanks for the info BarryP!

I have done your style of training for most of this year after the BarryP inspiration, and even though I was 100% run focused in past years (just started tris this year), I am smashing all my run PRs. Think I peaked at 40 mpw 6 days a week but had to back down to 20 for a bit when my foot started hurting.

Think I will aim for the 30 mark week for the winter and then see if I bump up towards 45 in the spring!