How to Adjust Your Turkey Workout Plan
Thanksgiving is a great time to go jogging . You can train in clear autumn weather, and the race takes place on a day when you are expected to be able to feast as much as you like after that. Just one problem: Most training plans assume you race on the weekend, but your turkey will be on Thursday. How do you make it fit?
There are several approaches, but caveat first: If you are running the turkey trot just for fun and don’t plan to taper or peak in any meaningful way, just do whatever you like. Get some rest the day before the race, or at least don’t run harder than usual, then go to the start and knock yourself out.
But if you decide turkey is a targeted race and you want to perform at your best, then you should follow a training plan. Your favorite running app probably has a set of workout plans built in, or you can get them from a source like halhigdon.com .
The problem with scheduling is that your program is likely to take a long time to run; the long term is likely to fall over the weekend; and the program assumes you have a full week, give or take a day, between your last long run and the race. You have half a week off. There are several ways to deal with this discrepancy, so take your pick:
Option 1: Do long runs on Thursdays
There is no law, according to which the long run should be on weekends. That’s when most of us find the time. You can move the program forward (or backward) several days so that all weekend runs are on Thursday.
Depending on your schedule and how your plan is put together, this can be quite annoying (okay, today is Monday, so I need to watch my workout on Wednesday …) so you might prefer another option.
Option 2: Subtract a few days to maintain a full taper week.
The week before the race is the most important one to follow the rules. (For longer distances, such as a marathon or semitone, your taper may be two or three weeks; for 5 km, the taper is more likely in the last week or only in the last few days.) Taper is important because that’s when you Loosen up your training so much. to get some rest to improve performance, but you don’t want to rest too much and start to lose fitness.
This is why I would advise against ending the program and resting until race day. You will miss more workouts than you need to; in terms of runners, you would peak too early. So work backwards from race day. For a 5K race, make sure you are doing the last four or five days of the program for the last four or five days before the race.
Suppose you are following an eight week program and your race falls on Thursday, November 26th. You will go through the sixth week as written (8th to 14th) and then start the seventh week on the 15th. But then, on Friday the 20th, you will go ahead and start the eighth week. This gives you a full week to complete the eighth week and be on time for the race.
What happens to a long run at the end of the seventh week? You have two options. One is to skip. Another is to do it a little earlier – perhaps Thursday the 19th – so that you skip the middle of the seventh week rather than the end of it. However you slice it, you remove a few days from week seven so that week eight can end with a race day.
Option 3: pause the program and add a few idle days in the middle
If you’ve already set up your calendar with a program that ends the weekend until Thanksgiving, you will need to add time, not take away. The easiest way to do this is to set aside a medium week somewhere in the middle and just repeat it twice. Then you will go back to the option described above.
Or, if you like the idea of just having a few days off to do what you want, do it! But don’t plan these days right before the race. Do them in the middle of your program, or at least a week before. If you have a week when you’re busy, traveling, or relaxing, think of it as an opportunity. During this time, run only if you feel like it, and do any run of any length and intensity you want. Then, when the gap is over, go back to the program and plan your finish right on Turkey Day.