Running

A training plan for your running group

A build for the whole season, and for every session a worked plan with drills, timings and coaching points.

A running group leaves together and is spread across the park five minutes later. Five kilometres is twenty minutes for the front of the group and closer to half an hour for the back, when the back is the part that should be out there least long. So this plan is written in minutes rather than distance, and in effort rather than pace: twenty minutes easy is twenty minutes easy for everyone.

With young runners there is a second problem. A scaled-down adult schedule is the easy mistake in this sport, and the athletics federations all say the same thing about it: fartlek, relays and mixed movement instead of interval blocks. That is built into the drills here, with a ceiling per age group on what a week is allowed to become.

We plan that order for you. Each week has a job, and we say what it means for your next running day.

How a running week works

01
Two or three running days is the rhythm most groups are on, with the rest days spread between them rather than stacked at the end.
02
One session carries the hard work: intervals, hills or tempo, placed as far as possible from a race or from the long run.
03
The rest is easy. Genuinely easy. The common mistake in a running week is not too little hard running, it is easy runs done too fast.

What a drill looks like

A running drill from the library, written for the middle age group. The text you see here is the text that ends up on your session sheet.

Gears Fartlek

5 to 20 minutes

Touches every gear of running inside one playful run, with the runner choosing the changes.

Setup: Mark out a closed loop of 400 m or less with cones. The whole loop must be visible from one spot inside it.
How it runs: - Runners keep moving for the whole block and change gear whenever they like: running, jogging, walking or skipping. - The block lasts 5 to 15 minutes of continuous movement. The coach holds the only watch and calls the finish. - Runners do not use watches. There are no set reps, counted laps or notes. - Use the picture of a bicycle: runners move up through the gears and back down, as often as they want. - You can suggest a gear change, but never order one. If a runner wants to walk a stretch, they walk it. - Start with a 5-minute block when a group first meets the drill. Build up to 15 minutes once runners can keep moving without stopping.
Coaching points: A gear change should be visible from across the field. A surge nobody can see was not one.
Run a lap with the group so the youngest runner has someone to change gear with.
Call out a landmark to change gear at rather than a time. The ground decides more easily than a clock.
Common mistakes: Two children turning the block into a race → say again that the gear is the runner's own and nobody is timed.
The group settling into one speed for 10 min → send them the other way round the loop, or over its rougher half, and the pace changes itself.
Kit: 6 × cone, 1 × stopwatch

Where this fits

Running plans are everywhere. Ten weeks to a 5K, a block of intervals, a marathon build: anyone looking finds something sound inside ten minutes.

Those plans are written for one runner with one goal. A group is not that. Twelve people at different paces, in different weeks, with different years behind them, and you writing one session for all of them. That is the problem this was built for.

Ages and limits

Federations divide their youth into different age groups, and the plan follows whichever one applies. You say which country you coach in and which age group your team plays. Where we hold that federation's categories, the plan uses its names. Every age group carries a load ceiling that decides which drills qualify and how hard a week can get. That ceiling sits in the code, and it holds even when you ask for more.

Try it with your team

A few questions about your team, and the first weeks are already there.

Set up your team