How to train before your training plan starts
- Emma O'Toole
- Oct 19
- 6 min read
If you’re a runner or cyclist over 30, your Setup Season, the season before your season, is where breakthroughs are built. In this guide, you’ll learn how to improve your fitness by either pushing from the bottom (building aerobic base) or pulling from the top (raising top-end fitness), and how to use each method to prepare for your best race season yet.
Strength training for runners and cyclists over 30 is a game-changer for performance, resilience, and long-term health.
If you want the full breakdown, check out my Strength Training Over 30 Guides:
TRAINING BREAKDOWN
"You can improve your fitness by pushing from the bottom or pulling from the top"
By Emma O'Toole
Hi everyone,
Welcome to your Setup Season, the season before your season. The season that is the most underused window in a lot of runners and cyclists’ training year. 2 weeks ago, I shared 5 of the biggest off-season mistakes that I see runners and cyclists make (read that here); in today’s newsletter we’re going to see how your setup season avoids the following two mistakes:
Avoiding intensity altogether.
Ignoring your weaknesses.
These mistakes usually happen because the narrative that’s been pushed is that we should only spend the off-season base training and recovering. However, that’s not the case and what you do now lays the foundation for your key race/event next year. If you’re hoping for a breakthrough and a PB in 2026, your Setup Season is where the wheels start turning.
A training plan doesn’t work in isolation
A 16-week, 12, 10 or 8-week training plan doesn’t work in isolation.
If you're hoping to hit a PB or have a breakthrough race off a standard 16-week training plan without thinking about what came before it, you're already stacking the odds against you because the training you do before your 12 week training plan is what makes the plan successful.
Which approach you take during your Setup Season depends on:
What race you're targeting.
What kind of runner/cyclist you are.
What you’ve done (or haven’t done) over the past few months.
This Setup Season is not a one-size-fits-all base phase, rather it is an opportunity to train differently in order to set yourself up for that breakthrough season next year.
I’m going to share with you 2x scenarios to help explain what I mean.
Scenario 1: You’re training for a long distance event: half marathon, marathon, 100km bike.
If you're planning to run a marathon, or half, in spring or early summer, your Setup Season is vitally important.
Depending on the kind of runner you currently are, your approach should look very different.
For example, if you’ve never run a marathon before, or you’re someone who consistently hits the wall at mile 20, then the Setup Season is your chance to build your aerobic base now, so you’re not spending the first 8-10 weeks of your plan just increasing the distance/duration of your long run.
Use this block to:
Gradually build your long run to double digits (10+ miles).
Increase your weekly mileage to a manageable and consistent level.
Improve your running economy through endurance training and strength training.
This means when you start Week 1 of your 16 week marathon training plan, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re not going to spend the next 16 weeks building your long run and instead you can hold/potentially increase your weekly volume, and you can focus on marathon specificity, eg. marathon pace training workouts.
On the other hand, and now we’re taking the example of an experienced half marathon runner. So this is an individual who has completed many marathons, has a consistent weekly run volume but has not seen their times improve for a while now, maybe even years, then your Setup Season should look very different.
We’re going to shift the focus entirely:
Go short, fast and aim to build top-end speed and mechanical efficiency. A great example here would be using the Setup Season to improve your 5km time. Not only does it give you a mental break away from training for a longer distance endurance event, it allows you to raise your ceiling.
In training, I like to say that we can improve fitness by either “pushing from the bottom or pulling from the top”. That’s the concept that we can either build you a solid aerobic base that pushes your fitness from the bottom up, or we can pull from the top with improving your top-end fitness. The caveat here is that to pull from the top we need that solid base in the first instance and that is exactly what we are describing in this scenario.
So you can see here that we have 2 races with 2 two completely different approaches on how to target the Setup Season depending on their experience, however each approach leans to the same outcome: a better-prepared runner come the start of their race training plan.
Improving fitness by “pushing from bottom or pulling from the top” is not reserved only for runners, it certainly applies to cyclists too. If next season you’re hoping to ride a 100km PB then depending on the current cyclist you are right now we can either “push from the bottom” by improving your base fitness and endurance- great for a cyclist who starts to flag and fatigue at 50km. Or we can “pull from the top”, great for a cyclist who can comfortably ride 100km+ but doesn’t seem to get any stronger, for this cyclist their Setup Season could be focused around developing their 5 minute and 10 minute power output.
If you’re setting personal bests in shorter races, eg. 5km, 1 mile, or 5 minute power that speed and power pulls your fitness up from the top. This means that your catalogue of paces and power, eg. tempo paces, z2, marathon pace, 10 mile power can all trend faster or higher.
Scenario 2: You’re training for a 5km, 10km, 10 mile or 25 mile time trial.
Now in this scenario many runners and cyclists think that they need to spend more time working on these paces or powers to improve their performance at these races. However, just as we saw above we need to use the Setup Season to do something different.
Let’s take the 45 year old runner who wants to improve their 5km time. It would be tempting to use the Setup Season to hammer out 5× 1k reps, but spoiler: they’ll do that in their actual 5km training block.
For the majority of those who’s focus is on the shorter distance events, the area they’re weakest in is their aerobic fitness: their base fitness. And in our Setup Season, we have the opportunity to improve your fitness and top-end speed by “pushing from the bottom” and improving your base fitness to allow you to handle those faster sessions later and to be able to recover from them.
Even the fastest 5K runners in the world still build their base with 16-mile long runs to stress and develop their aerobic system. A clear example of “pushing from the bottom”!
We can see this on the bike too, if your focus in 2026 is improving your 10 mile time trial time then developing your base fitness with long rides in your Setup Season is a great way to do so.
If you take anything from this newsletter, it’s that the Setup Season isn't generic.
It’s tailored to:
Your next goal
Your current fitness
Your historical gaps
Sometimes that can mean “pushing from the bottom” and sometimes that can mean “pulling from the top”.
Whilst, it’s tempting to look at training in isolation to believe that the right plan, downloaded at the right time, is what is going to get you the result; but that’s not how breakthroughs happen. They happen when the Setup Season is smarter.
Start now and train before you train.
This week in our amazing free community everyday runners and cyclists over 30, just like you, we’ve been talking about …..!
Have a great day!
Thank you!
Emma x
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Great article!