My wife has signed up for her first 10k, but she has no clue about structured training. For a few weeks she has followed the Couch To 5k plan, but there doesn’t seem anything beyond that in the app. For sure, it doesn’t seem super sophisticated.
Is there any structured training program she can follow? She owns an Apple Watch and has an iPhone. Any ideas? I think her abilities would skyrocket once she starts with interval training and the like.
TreadmillRoad?
I’ve been asking for years…
Runna, Nike and Garmin run plans are popular, as is joining a running club - they’re all mid training for spring marathons now.
Structured training does help particularly with minimising injury risk, which is the big issue for runners. Whereas cyclist can do loads of hard training. Good luck to enjoying the journey ahead to her 
Get the “Daniels’ Running Formula” book. Closest thing to an FTP based training plan for running
HIGHLY recommend checking out the BarryP Run plan….you can also google 3/2/1 Run Plans, which are the same basic things.
Essentially, it is about building volume through consistency, not long runs. Run 6 days a week, and everyday is based on a given “block” or unit of measurement. For this example, I’ll use 1 mile as the “block”. For three days, you would run 1 “block”, or 1 mile. For two days, you would run 2 blocks (2 miles) and for one day, you run 3 blocks (3 miles). All the runs are initially done at a VERY easy pace. Add in more distance at ~10% week. After the initial training block, you can begin to add in a bit of intensity on the 2-block days.
It is a great plan for people just beginning run training as it emphasizes shorter, but more frequent runs to help build up the muscles and tendons to continue to run injury free.
The Jack Daniels book is also very good, but I think for beginners can be too much at first, especially when it comes to faster runs.
Runna is TR for running.
Nice find. We downloaded it and she’ll give it a try. I also explained 3-2-1 to her and it made sense. She already knows and likes interval training (a positive surprise to me) and on her latest bike ride, her heart rate reached 152 bpm. Three months ago when she tried out working out on the bike, her “all out” was about 140–142 bpm. Nice progress.
I had a quick look, that makes a lot of sense. While my wife was giving me a massage, I was giving her the cliff notes. I will have another look at it later when I have had time to read the details. But as a rough rule of thumb, it makes a lot of sense.
From what Ive seen, runna prescribes most people too many speed workouts and they end up getting injured.
Hal higdon is free and has been the gold standard for many many years
That’s a good one! Forget to mention that. 
For newer runners or people who haven’t trained a ton in the past, I’d recommend supplementing some running with cross-training along the way.
I’ve used TR as a cross-training tool for marathon training in the past. It’s great for building out the framework of a training schedule. You can do your best to follow the rhythm of the plan while running when you can and cycling when you can’t.
There are two sides of the equation here:
You can develop your aerobic system in lots of different ways. Cycling is one of the best since it’s generally accessible to most people, extremely efficient, and very low-impact.
At first, it’s probably best to do the hard workouts of the week on the bike to ensure that you’re able to knock them out with quality and avoid any injuries. Fill in the other days with as much easy running as you’re comfortable with.
As you continue to get some miles on your legs, you’ll start to feel stronger, and you can start adding in some strides to the end of those easy runs. At some point, you’ll be able to start transitioning some of the hard workouts to runs and use the bike for some of your recovery days.
It needs to be a slow transition, but ultimately, having something like a bike to offload some of the stress is a really key part of getting into running shape quickly. Many athletes aren’t running for 100% of their training stimulus, as the threshold of running volume in hours is much lower than in something like cycling.
At this point, I typically do most of my hard days running and fill in with easy time on the bike to give my legs a rest when I need it. If I’m feeling particularly sore on any one day/week, I’ll transition more of my work to the bike so that I can continue getting good stimulus while resting some of those running-specific muscles and tendons at the same time.
I’ve found that it’s really important to be in tune with how you’re feeling and be a bit conservative with running stress. If you’re wondering whether you should be running or cycling one day, just get on the bike. You won’t lose too much in terms of musculoskeletal conditioning by getting on the bike a few times a week as long as you’re consistent with your running.
Here is a great marathon training plan where if you stay on the low end of mileage recommendations, you’re peaking at around 35 miles/week, which is sort of a bare minimum for marathon training. You could use something like this as a template and make adjustments as needed. Cross-training is included too!
I used one of his free plans 15 years ago 
I was 50 pounds over weight, and I lived to tell the tale of finishing. Damn, feels like longer than 15 years.
Thanks again for the recommendation for Runna, my wife completed her first 10k last weekend and she was much faster than she or I thought. What a kickass community!
The app seems decent, with pre-race stretching routines and such built in.
My wife was much faster than I had anticipated. So fast that in fact I failed to get a picture of her crossing the finish line (I had to take care of three kids and couldn’t just wait next to the finish line).
The first 7k she was on a 7:17ish pace, but in the end, she ran a little longer than 1:06 hours. In training she set her “FTP” (= pace) to 7:30 minutes/km, something she corrected last night. What is more important, she loved the experience.
Next weekend is her next 10k race. She plans to run her first half-marathon next year. Not sure if she can enter the famous Berlin half-marathon, but there should be plenty of others to choose from.