Need Advice on My Running Plan

Hey fellas… I am applying for the Army Officer Candidate School, but due to so many people joining now-a-days I won’t start until at least Spring of 2011.

However I have very low running endurance, since for the last 1.5 years I have focused exclusively on lifting. And prior to that I did HIT type training a week or less. The following is a plan I came up with and wanted to know if it was a decent one.

1st 4weeks.
Walk-&-Run for 20mins twice a week.
Once I feel good simply run for 20mins, twice a week.

2nd 4weeks.
Run for 20mins once a week.
Run for 10mins and do 30:60’s 5reps once a week.

As you can see I am only running twice a week. I plan to continue to lift 4x a week (1 light day). I also do not plan to change my diet (lotta milk).

Oh… I will be running around the neighborhood so I have no idea how many miles I will be doing.

Mileage will be big when you get to Benning. I looked into Army OCS as well, they say they run anywhere from 2-5 miles a day for cadets. Keep up with the lifting and add calisthenics where possible, since they’ll have you do plenty of that as well. Not sure about how many days per week of running you should do now since you are only starting, I guess stick to the 2 days and progress as you regain endurance. Might wanna practice for the weighted ruck hike (10 miles).

Go check out some of Stew Smith’s stuff. He’s got e-books on prepping for pretty much every military program out there.

You may want to check out Hal Higdon’s marathon training schedule, it’s what I used to train for a marathon. Now I know you’re not training for a marathon but this will get your endurance up in a manner that will not cause injuries.

Here’s his site:

Us the “Novice” schedule. The key is is not to increase effort or distance by more than 10% per week. Any more and plantar fasciitis (or other injuries) sets in and that ain’t any fun.

I also bought a small GPS wristwatch to track mileage.

I’m assuming push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups are not an issue?

By the way, a 42 year-old friend of mine joined last year and went through basic, OCS and jump school. He loved it. He used to do training runs with me over lunch. Great guy and now a 1st LT. in Afghanistan bringing the fight to the Jihads.

ARMY!

Thanks fellas

[quote]Neospartan wrote:
Hey fellas… I am applying for the Army Officer Candidate School, but due to so many people joining now-a-days I won’t start until at least Spring of 2011.

However I have very low running endurance, since for the last 1.5 years I have focused exclusively on lifting. And prior to that I did HIT type training a week or less. The following is a plan I came up with and wanted to know if it was a decent one.

1st 4weeks.
Walk-&-Run for 20mins twice a week.
Once I feel good simply run for 20mins, twice a week.

2nd 4weeks.
Run for 20mins once a week.
Run for 10mins and do 30:60’s 5reps once a week.

As you can see I am only running twice a week. I plan to continue to lift 4x a week (1 light day). I also do not plan to change my diet (lotta milk).

Oh… I will be running around the neighborhood so I have no idea how many miles I will be doing.

[/quote]

are you currently in the military?

when my brother went to OCS at Benning, they ran a shitload…dailly, and roadmarched almost daily as well. i would transition to a more cardio workout from your lifting if you want to prepare for endurance based stuff.

my bro went there with an average APFT of 265-280, and lost about 25-30 lbs. he literally smelled like ammonia half the time…i was down at Airborne school at the time, and i felt bad for him.

Doing intervals a few times a week is a great way to condition your heart and body for endurance activity. 5 min. warm and I think you mentioned doing 30se. hard 60sec. recovery. I would start extending the sprint intervals from 30sec. up to 45sec. and you can move that up to 1min. intervals as you get stronger. even ladders up to 3min.- 30,45,1,115,130,2 you get the idea.

The idea would be to shorten recovery time and lengthen speed. Getting two of these days in a week I would still try to get up to running a longer run. Intervals are great but if you are going to be running 3-5miles you may want to start spending more time on the run. It does suck but it will help.

You don’t need all this marathon preparation if you lifting weights 4 times a week. All you need is build yourself up to being able to run for about an hour longest (as a challenge for yourself) once a couple months time. And the rest of the time run for about 30-40 min playing with the speed. Fartlek it’s called when you do sprints and speed-ups whenever you feel like it on the run. It helps to build such a stamina that you’ll be amazed. I ran this style for about 4 months.

After that i could run at a much faster pace feeling like i have a spare lungs or hidden tank filled with air for my lungs.:slight_smile: And all you need is time,you don’t need to count mileage. You can occasionally just to check yourself if you have an access to the nearest stadium.

Go to coolrunning.com

Pick a plan that works for you. The couch to 5k is great.

[quote]goose27 wrote:
Go to coolrunning.com

Pick a plan that works for you. The couch to 5k is great.[/quote]
The cool runnings workouts are nice but I think it is tough to follow only because they are geared towards a runner only mentality. I definitely modify some of their training to fit weight training in to the scheme.

mapmyrun.com is a good site that lets you figure out how far you’re going through neighborhoods and shit too

These are all fine ideas, but probably the best advice I can give you would be to PM someone who’s active in the War Room T-Cell, and see if they can either:

  1. Get you a Cell invite so you can ask the question there --or–

  2. Put you in direct contact with someone who’s been through the training so that you’ll have a good idea what you’ll need to be able to do.

Just giving out running advice is fine, but it’s a lot easier if you know exactly what the goal is; I wouldn’t recommend a couch-to-marathon plan if you need to run a fast 5k, for example.