Monday, January 12, 2009

Officially In-Training

With the kids back in school. I spent last week adjusting back to a "normal" schedule. Ran four times, a total of about 14 miles for the week. Hadn't quite decided what to do with my late winter / early spring, so I spent a bit of time thinking about it while I was getting back up to daily official exercise. (Lugging laundry, ironing, cooking, cleaning, etc. - exhausting, but not officially exercise.)

While putting my Saturday run into my Runners World training log, I noticed the calendar. I'm 11-12 weeks out from the ING Atlanta Half Marathon. Just enough time to start an intermediate improve-your-time program. I don't see why I can't tackle the "run a half marathon faster than 2008" goal right now.

There are a couple of 10k races between now and March 29th, so I stand a good chance of checking the P.R. for that distance off the list, too. Any 5k races over the next few months will likely be with my kids, so it's their fun that counts. (Times count too, but in an neener-neener I run faster than you, you stinky boy/ snotty girl way, common to siblings everywhere.)

I'm reading up on Hal Higdon's Intermediate Half Plan (12 week), as well as the Long Program - Half Marathon Training (10 week) at Runner's World. I'll probably end up with a mash up of the two, but here's what I have come up with for this week:

Monday - Stretch/Strength
Tuesday - 4 mile, easy
Wednesday - XT / Rest
Thursday - 3 mile, hill
Friday - Stretch / Strength
Saturday - 6 mile, long
Sunday - 3 mile, easy

2 comments:

Slamdunk said...

Sounds like a good aggressive plan.

Two questions: 1) Is WED your make-up day when something messes up one of your other days scheduled? I usually had to build in 2 days like that--probably a weakness on my part.

2) Do you have several routes that you switch between? It was difficult for me to stay with a plan if I simply altered the distances and the pace while running the same course.

mappchik said...

I have to figure every day is subject to being rescheduled. Usually I have an official rest day, and a light day which I can move around if needed. I knew my schedule allowed for 6-7 days this week, so I'm taking them all. Other than upping the long run by one mile each Saturday, and following with an easy Sunday run, I'm not going to be too rigid in the plan.

I do have different routes for different distances, as well as having a couple of routes I only run on a hill workout. I don't know if that's the "right" thing to do, but it's just too hard to run past my house 2-3 times if I try to do laps to make the short route a long run.