How to plan an endurance season in blocks
Split your season into base, build, specific and taper blocks. A practical guide for runners, cyclists and triathletes.
Planning a season doesn't mean writing 40 weeks of workouts at once. It means deciding where you're going and splitting the road into blocks of 3 to 6 weeks, each with a clear goal.
Start from the end
Mark your main race and count backwards. Between 16 and 24 weeks is a sensible window to prepare a marathon, a middle-distance triathlon or a long trail race.
The four classic blocks
- Base: lots of easy volume, technique and general strength. It builds the aerobic capacity everything else rests on.
- Build: threshold work and the first intervals come in. Volume keeps rising, with more quality.
- Specific: sessions that look like the race: goal pace, elevation, fuelling and gear.
- Taper: volume drops, some intensity stays, and you arrive fresh.
Inside each block
The usual pattern is two or three weeks of increasing load followed by a lighter week. That way your body absorbs the work before you ask for more.
Measure to adjust
A plan is a hypothesis. Tracking the load of every session and how your fitness evolves tells you whether the block is working or whether something needs to change before you reach race day tired.