Workout Schedule
The workout schedule will help you increase your distance performance from week to week. This goes hand in hand with the automatic route calculation as you will always be able to find appropriate routes. Even better, your training will also become less boring as calculated routes will contain new variations to match the targeted distance.
Please note that the TrailRunner workout schedule is a basic exercise plan that can not replace an individual analysis performed by an expert.
General concept
The workout schedule is based on a 3 week cycle consisting of a normal week, an intensive week and a regeneration week. The normal week is assumed as 100% of the distance goal for this cycle. The intensive week is set to 120% and the regeneration week to 80%.
After completing a 100-120-80% cycle the distance for the upcoming 100% week will be increased by a percentage you can define.
The cycle described counts for one workout unit per week, but you can add as many workout units per week as you wish, each containing a different base distance value and cycle increase value. For example, if you plan two workouts per week, you could increase the first workout by 1% per cycle and the second by 5% per cycle.
Creating a new workout schedule
The following steps will create a new workout schedule containing two workouts per week. The first workout will be called the during the week workout and the second the weekend workout. The during the week workout will start at 10 km, increasing by 1% per cycle, the weekend workout will start at 12 km increasing by 5% per cycle.
Open the Exercise Plan window.
Open the Exercise Plan tab.
In the first entry of the units table, double click the distance cell and enter 10 km.
Enter 1% into the Increase field and a desired pace into the pace field, e.g. 5:40.
Make a short description like weekdays into the Time field.
Select the second entry in the units table or add a new one.
Enter 12 km, 5%, e.g. 5:30 and Weekends into the corresponding fields.
In the start date picker, select a starting date for the first week of this plan.
Click on the start over button.
Select the Exercise Calendar tab.
You now have set up a new workout schedule containing one week.
Finding a route
You can let TrailRunner find a route for you that matches the distance suggested in the workout schedule.
Open a document that contains the network of tracks you want to perform your workout in.
Select the workout unit you want to accomplish and click the Find route Button.
Select the starting point in the document window and click the calculate route button in the create route pane.
Adding diary entries
When you have completed a workout you might (in any case) want to'a0journalize'a0your workouts:
Select the workout route in the main window and then call Route > Add diary entry , to add an entry to the diary.
If you own a GPS unit, import the workout from the unit and make sure ti check the add diary entry check box.
Marking workout units as done
The greater goal of the workout schedule is to increase your distance performance in small steps. But sometimes you miss a workout unit or you were not able to complete the full unit. Therefore, before you add new exercise units for the upcoming week, you must mark completed exercise units as really being done. To set a selected exercise unit to completed, follow these steps:
Open the diary and the workout schedule so that you can see both windows.
Select the exercise unit entry you wish to mark as completed.
In the diary, Select the diary entry that matches a selected workout schedule entry.
You can also use the two arrow buttons in the workout schedule window to move the diary selection between different workout entries in the diary.
When you have selected an workout schedule unit and a corresponding diary entry, click the Apply button in the workout schedule.
The concrete values of the accomplished workout will now be copied over to the workout schedule and the exercise unit will be checked with a green check-mark.
Using this technique will dynamically adjust the progression of following workout schedule weeks. For example all units that where not checked as being completed will not add up to the progression calculation for the upcoming weeks.
On the other hand, if you have completed an exercise unit but performed a farer or shorter distance as the planned distance, you overwrite the planned distance with the real accomplished distance. By doing this you will get an adaptive training plan.
Adding new week cycles
After completing a week, you will need to add a new week containing new units suggestions. To add a new week follow these steps.
The Calendar view on the right shows the current date in blue and the start date for current selected exercise week in grey.
Press new New Week Button to to calculate the exercise values for a following week.
As soon as you add a new week, TrailRunner checks the past cycle and then calculates the new weeks suggestion based on the previous cycle distances per week. This is to avoid a progress increase for a planned performance you actually didn't perform.