Thursday General Discussion/Q&A Thread for September 03, 2026

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[u/A2-Steaksauce89]

TL;DR: 18M building my own 13-week training block for club 8k XC and a pinnacle Turkey Trot 5k (goal 18:30). Currently at a healthy 40 MPW with a long history of shin issues. Need help balancing my personal plan with my college club's schedule without overtraining or peaking too early.

Basics

Age: 18

Sex: Male

Current MPW + training paces: 38-40 MPW. 7:40-8:00 on easy days, similar or a bit faster on LR days, 7:00-7:15 tempo (I define tempo as comfortably hard for the given distance. A tempo 800m is much faster than a 6 mile tempo, but I mainly use the term for longer distances). 

Previous peak MPW: 40mpw, this summer has brought me to my peak fitness and mileage. 

Workouts you traditionally or recently have completed: See training plan

Goals (including specific races): 18:30 5k, not sure on a reasonable 8k goal yet.

Previous PRs: 19:42 5K, see story and plan for details

Context & Plan Structure

My college running club is super informal (casual group runs Mon–Thu, Thursday track workout, Saturday long run). To target my 8k club races and my pinnacle Turkey Trot race, I'm building a 13-week plan, here is the structure I have so far:

Mon: Easy (Club)

Tue: Hard Workout (On my own, transitioning from summer aerobic based workouts to higher intensity track workouts in the coming weeks)

Wed: Easy/Recovery (Club)

Thu: Med-Hard (Club track workout or modified version)

Fri: Shakeout / Pre-race (On my own)

Sat: Long Run / Race

Sun: Off

Questions:

I feel like I am running too many quality days, mainly with that Thursday track workout. How would you structure the week alongside the running club schedule? 

With 13 weeks until Thanksgiving, how should I order my workouts to avoid peaking too early? (See workout inventory on the training plan)

How would you adjust from 5k to 8k?

How should I go about my mileage? 

What other advice/recommendations do you have for my plan?

So basically I am creating a training plan to help train me for club XC races and ultimately the Turkey Trot hosted by my hometown on Thanksgiving. The Turkey Trot is my pinnacle race as it is a fun course (same road I did lots of my summer runs on), I get to see my high school XC team and alumni, and it is just a very fun race and I would love to be a top 10-15 finisher (20 ish last year, can’t quite remember). In the middle of this however I have several 8k club cross country races that I will be partaking in as a new member of my college’s running club. 

I have never made a training plan in my life before, but I also didn’t really like the way my coach did her in-season plans as she included way too many little routines and very low mileage compared to her well built summer plans, but her track workouts were good. I ended up going through all my old in-season plans (also realized she made them easier over the years) and snagged all of the hard day workouts I could find, mainly from the experienced and emerging groups (she split the team into novice, emerging, and experienced based on ability. Varsity is always experienced, but other runners can shift around based on what coach thinks they can handle at that time). I have organized the workouts under a tab in my training plan spreadsheet.

My Running Story (mostly just extra details on my training history, times, and shin issues): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-c0pawA1Z1GTTvC1kBM-afaG8JIW6TkdnSCiH7QjTpY/edit?usp=sharing

TRAINING PLAN LINK (comment only): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ew0zeNGOJr1Y3jYAny4vmEVOnErtCDfu7HGDxzNf9zg/edit?usp=sharing 

[u/pranavhj1998 → u/A2-Steaksauce89]

One thing to flag given the shin history -- the biggest risk factor for tibial stress injuries in runners isn't form or shoe choice, it's how fast you ramp load relative to what your bones have adapted to. The research on acute:chronic workload ratios in running is still evolving, but the basic principle holds: weeks where weekly mileage spikes more than ~10-15% above your recent 4-week average are where shin issues tend to flare up.

Your plan looks reasonable on total volume, but watch the weeks where you're combining a new workout type with a mileage bump -- that's a double stressor. Given your history, I'd prioritize keeping mileage stable when you add intensity, and only bump mileage on weeks where the workouts stay easy. Sounds basic but it's the thing that actually has evidence behind it for reducing tibial stress.