Running / Training Schedule

Some people like to run, or not, as the mood strikes them. I'm not good at that, preferring a little more structure, even if it's only structure that I provide for myself. For the last three years, therefore, I have created and mostly followed a running schedule, designed to get me to the next marathon in good enough shape to run it.

I get up in the morning and look at the schedule to see what's on tap for the day. Of course I know that Tuesday is usually the day for the long run of the week, and weekend days are often races. But the schedule tells me how far to run, and I always run that far if there is no physical reason not to.

Since it's my own schedule I change it as needed, so long as the weekly mileage goal is still met. For example, I had four miles in the schedule for yesterday, intending to do the Reindeer Run with some cool-down. But when we decided to run indoors instead, that seemed like an opportunity to run a little farther. So I did six instead, and then reduced today's scheduled mileage by two.

I've added a link to the current schedule on the righthand panel of the blog. It will probably be kept mostly up to date; we'll see.