Your running season on one sheet of paper.

How the sheet works

Each row is a week, Monday to Sunday. The columns on the right say what the week holds: ER, the easy runs (12+12 is two easy runs of 12 km), QR, one quality run, and LR, the long run. The grey number at the end is the week’s planned distance. You decide on which day each run happens.

The quality run is written as a short code:

H: 6×1′

Hill repeats: six one-minute hard efforts uphill, by effort, not pace; jog back down.

I: 5×3′

Intervals: five three-minute repeats at interval pace.

T: 3×8′

Threshold: repeats at threshold pace, comfortably hard.

MP: 3×3 km

Repeats at marathon pace.

S

Strides: a shorter easy run with six relaxed 20-second accelerations, never a sprint.

RACE 21 km

A race in place of the session.

–

No session this week.

Intervals, threshold and marathon-pace repeats have two minutes of jogging between them.

The paces

The paces are printed under the table, worked out from one race you ran recently with Jack Daniels’ formula. A 3:30:02 marathon, for example, gives easy runs at 5:37 per km, threshold at 4:40, intervals at 4:18 and marathon pace at 4:59. You can also set any of them yourself.

Colouring it in

When you’ve done a run, colour its day. The sheet itself is black and white and the colours are yours; these are the ones the author uses:

• easy run
• quality run
• long run
• something unexpected: illness, a trip

At the end of the week, colour one box for every kilometre you ran. A week counts as fully done at 80 % of its planned kilometres, so a missed run doesn’t spoil it. The colour says how the week went:

• 80 % or more: done
• 50 to 80 %
• under 50 %

The idea behind it

An outline, not a prescription. No season goes to plan. You get ill, work runs late, you travel. The sheet shows the shape of the season, and you adapt the details as you go. Two rules printed on every sheet say what to give up first:

Short on time: drop an easy run, then intensity, then the long run.

Tired or ill: drop intensity first.

Grown from practice, checked against coaching guidance. Three weeks of building, then a lighter week. Quality sessions that grow a little each time they come round. Before each important race, a block aimed at that race, then a taper; after it, recovery and an easier week back into training. These rules started as the author’s own plan for his 2026 season, and each one was then checked against published coaching guidance and changed where the two disagreed. His threshold pace, for example, was about 10 seconds per km too fast for his race result; the generator now works it out with Jack Daniels’ formula. Every rule and its source is listed in the training model.

Make your own

The generator runs on your own computer, from the terminal. You don’t need to know how to program, but you will type a few commands. It takes about ten minutes the first time.

1. Install it once

   You need Python 3.11 or newer and Git. Then, in a terminal:

   git clone https://github.com/f-hluchnik/training-table-generator.git
   cd training-table-generator
   python3 -m venv .venv
   . .venv/bin/activate
   pip install -e .

   On Windows, the fourth line is .venv\Scripts\activate, and py -3 replaces python3. Run the fourth line again in every new terminal before using the generator.

2. Describe your season

   Create a text file, for example my-season.toml, with your races, a recent race result and how far you run now:

   start = 2027-05-03              # the first week of the plan
   
   [[race]]
   name = "Běhej lesy Lednice"
   date = 2027-10-09
   distance_km = 42.195
   
   [paces]
   # a race you ran recently; all paces are worked out from it
   race_result = { distance_km = 42.195, time = "3:30:02" }
   
   [load]
   easy_run_km = 12                # the length of one easy run
   long_run_km = 15                # your long run now

   That is all the generator needs. Dates are written without quotes.

3. Build the sheet

   ttg build my-season.toml

   The PDF appears in a folder out next to your file. The generator never refuses a plan: if two races are close together or the season starts late, it still builds the sheet, shortens what has to give, and prints a warning in the terminal. If the file has a mistake, the message names the field at fault and nothing is written.

4. Print it

   On A4, landscape, at 100 % (not “fit to page”), so the cells are big enough to colour. To change the plan later, edit your file and build again.

Common changes

Add any of these to your file:

• More races. Add a [[race]] section for each. Mark a tune-up race inside your training with priority = "C", an important race that isn’t your main goal with priority = "B".
• A trail or mountain race. Add hilly = true to its section.
• A goal marathon pace. Add mp = "4:55" under [paces].
• More runs a week. Add runs_per_week = 5 under [load]; the default is 4.
• One week different. Add [overrides] with, for example, 14 = { long_run_km = 30 }.

Every field and its default is in the reference below.

Keep your paces current

Your paces come from one race result, so they don’t follow your fitness on their own. Check them after each important race and every two or three months: let your easy runs get faster at the same heart rate, but change threshold and marathon pace only after a race or a test run. Then build the sheet again.