Plans and paces,
in kilometres

The five efforts

Every session in every plan is one of these five. Learn them by feel first and by pace second — on a hot Karur morning your body is the more honest instrument.

Four plans

Each plan assumes one rest day minimum, a group long run on Sunday, and honest easy running in between. Nothing here is a promise — it is a structure. Repeat any week you are not ready to move on from. The plan waits.

Before every quality session: ten minutes easy, a few dynamic drills — leg swings, high knees, heel flicks — then four to six strides of about 100 m, building to fast and relaxed. Never start a hard session cold.

The pace chart

Find your pace per kilometre on the left and read across for your finish time. Half marathon is 21.0975 km and the marathon is 42.195 km — the chart uses the exact distances, not the rounded ones.

Your training paces

Run a 5K as hard as you honestly can, then find your time in the first column. Everything else follows from it. Re-test every couple of months and move the whole row down as you get fitter.

What that 5K predicts

A rough guide to what the same fitness is worth over longer distances. It only holds if you have actually trained for the distance — a fast 5K does not, on its own, buy you a marathon.

Heart rate zones

Pace tells you how fast you are going. Heart rate tells you what it is costing you — and on a hot Karur morning those two things come apart. Heart rate is the more reliable of the pair. The five zones below are the same five efforts this page has used throughout.

Your zones in beats

Enter your age and your resting heart rate — take it lying in bed, before you sit up, on three ordinary mornings and average them. If you have ever seen a true maximum on a watch, enter that instead of relying on the estimate.

• Heat pushes your heart rate up for the same effort — often by five to ten beats once you are an hour in, as you lose fluid and your body works harder to shed heat. That is not you getting unfit. Hold the zone and let the pace go.
• Estimated maximums are rough. Two runners the same age can sit twenty beats apart. Treat the numbers as a starting point and adjust them against how the efforts actually feel.
• Blood pressure and heart medication — beta blockers in particular — change these numbers completely. If you take any, ask your doctor what your zones should be rather than using this.

Running in the heat

Every pace chart ever published assumes cool weather. Ours rarely is. On a warm, humid morning the same effort produces a slower pace — that is physiology, not weakness. Adjust the target and keep the effort.

• Humidity makes it worse. Above about 70 per cent, add another 5 to 10 seconds per kilometre on top — sweat stops evaporating, so you stop cooling.
• Start ten minutes before sunrise. Not a fixed clock time — sunrise moves through the year, so the rule moves with it. Be laced up and running before the sun clears the horizon; once it is properly up, the road heats fast.
• Hydrate before you start. Drink 400 to 500 ml in the hour before you head out. You cannot make up a deficit once you are on the road — you can only fall further behind.
• Then 400 to 800 ml an hour while you run. The top of that range on a hot, humid morning; the bottom on a cool one. Sweat rates vary enormously between runners, so treat this as the bracket and thirst as the guide inside it.
• Use electrolyte, not just water, on anything past 60 to 90 minutes, and sooner in real heat. You lose a great deal of salt here, and replacing the fluid without the salt leaves you no better off.
• Find your own sweat rate once. Weigh yourself before and after an hour-long run, with no drinking in between. Every kilogram lost is about a litre of sweat — that is your hourly rate, and it beats any general figure including this one.
• Monsoon and post-monsoon bring standing water and poor visibility. Wear something bright, run facing traffic where there is no footpath, and never assume you have been seen.
• Stop if you feel dizzy, stop sweating, or get a headache and chills. Get into shade, get fluids, and get help. Heat illness moves faster than most runners expect.

Strength, recovery, race week

Running is what the plans measure. It is not the whole of what makes them work.

Two sessions a week

Wednesday is core, Friday is strength. Both are in the plans by name, and both are written out in full here. Neither needs a gym: where a fit ball is used, a floor alternative is given underneath.

Almost everything below is an anti-movement exercise — you are training the trunk to resist rotating, arching and collapsing rather than to curl up. That is what the core actually does at the moment of footstrike, and it is why there are no sit-ups here. The other theme is single-leg work, because running is not a two-legged sport.

• Never before a quality session or a long run. Core goes after Wednesday's easy run; strength sits on Friday, which is a rest day from running.
• Stop a set while it is still clean. The last repetition should look like the first. Form failing is the end of the set, not something to push through.
• Add repetitions before you add load. Bodyweight and a fit ball will keep you progressing for months.
• Skip it in race week. Both sessions come out of the plan in the final week — you will find those days marked as full rest.

Recovery is where you get faster

Training is the stimulus. The adaptation happens afterwards, and only if you let it.

• Sleep seven to nine hours. Nothing else on this list comes close. A hard session on five hours of sleep is a cost with no return.
• Eat within an hour of finishing, with protein alongside the carbohydrate. Curd rice and a banana does the job as well as anything sold in a tub.
• One full rest day minimum, two while you are building. Rest is a session; it is on the plan.
• Never stack two hard days. An easy day between quality sessions is what makes the quality possible.
• Back off when the signs appear — soreness that does not clear in two days, a resting heart rate several beats above normal, sleep going bad, or losing interest in running you normally enjoy. Take three easy days. It costs far less than the injury does.

Race week

The fitness is already banked. Race week is about arriving with it intact.

• Nothing new on race day. Not the shoes, not the socks, not the breakfast, not the gels. Everything you use should have been rehearsed on a long run.
• Keep running, just less. A taper is reduced volume, not rest. Short runs with a few strides keep your legs sharp.
• Sleep well all week. The two nights before matter more than the night before, which is usually bad for everyone and rarely costs anything.
• Lay it all out the night before — kit, shoes, bib pinned, watch charged. Race morning should contain no decisions.
• Eat a familiar breakfast two to three hours before the start, and keep sipping until about twenty minutes out.
• Start slower than your target for the first two kilometres. Every minute you bank early costs you three later. Nobody has ever regretted an easy first kilometre.

Questions we get

Pace calculator

Know the finish time you want? Enter it and get the pace you need, plus your five-kilometre splits to carry on race morning.

Run these with us

Plans are easier to keep when someone is waiting for you at the start. We are out on Karur's roads every week — beginners, regulars, and the odd marathoner. Bring the plan, we will bring the company.

• Log your runs with the club on Strava so we can see the week you have had.
• Every run and every update goes up first at @karur_runners.
• Questions about a plan? Write to info@karurrunners.com and we will help you pick one.