Training Plan

 It's actually been about three years since I wrote a training plan for myself (besides a plan I didn't end up doing due to injury). In that time, I've written quite a few plans for other people, but I have just stuck to flying by the seat of my pants with my own training. Part of that came from when I read the book "Run: The Mind Body Method of Running by Feel" by Matt Fitzgerald. "Run" devotes an entire chapter to "winging it." This does not mean no structure at all. In fact, in that chapter Fitzgerald writes, "Training without a plan... is not exactly training without planning."

However, I do not use plans from books or websites. I would recommend that if you're newer to running, you use a pre-written training plan and eventually get an idea of what workouts are like and what workouts work best for you.

What I've noticed is that my best race performances have come when I have had a written training plan. I've done training plans from several different books along with one website, and I feel like I have a good idea of how to structure my training. But, instead of completely flying by the seat of my pants, writing a training plan based on what has worked for me in the past along with improving my weaknesses should give me a better chance at success.

The training plan I've written is a little wonky. I really want to get as close as possible to meeting my goal of breaking 18 minutes in the 5K, so I have a lot of 5K-focused workouts. I also want to finish a marathon as well as I can, so I've got a good amount of marathon-focused workouts as well.

I'm hoping my training plan leads to some success. The past few weeks of running has been going really well, so I'm hoping that momentum carries into completing my training plan leads to some big gains in my performances.