Training Plan Dos (for TIaRT)

Training plans. Two words that can strike fear into the carefree, fun-loving runner who wants nothing more than to hit the road on her own schedule, at her own pace, on her own terms. Two words that can mean the difference between achieving a PR and being grossly unprepared. I've never been very good at following a training plan, but I've learned some things along the way from these plans that have helped me improve my running. Here they are:

Do allow extra time to train.
I think it is useful to add at least a week to your training plan. Life has a habit of happening despite your best plans to stay on target. You get sick. You get hurt. You have an opportunity to sneak out of town and drink with your friends. When you give yourself the minimal time to prepare for a race, it is super easy to run off course and get behind. Once you are behind, it is really tempting to scratch your plans all together. But with some cushion weeks, you give yourself the opportunity to catch up. I tried my first marathon with only 12 weeks to train. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I needed at least 16 - but probably more like 20 to really get in the runs I needed to if I wanted to do well.

Do run the long runs for the marathon.
It might seem obvious, but once you get in to the thick of the training plans with 3 - 20 milers staring at you in the face, you start to bargain with yourself. I was sure that my one 16 miler was enough. I threw in another 13 miler, figuring that if I could get through the first half easily, I would be fine. Wrong. There is a reason that training plans have so many long runs in them. Your body needs to learn how to be on its feet for so long. Your muscles and tendons begin to adapt to the stress, and your metabolism learns how to use fat for energy. For a great review of what the long run will do for you, check out this article. If you don't do the long runs, you might finish the marathon, but it won't be pretty. What surprised me most was how much walking hurt.

Do listen to your body.
It can be so tough to take a rest day on a day you are scheduled for a run, but if you feel a pain that feels like the beginning of an injury - rest. The way a marathon trainer friend of mine puts it is, "6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months." If you catch an injury early, you might only have to take 6 days off. Keep pushing through the pain, the injury has a good chance of getting worse. What might have healed up quickly can become chronic. Most of us don't plan on running only for a short time. So we have to take the long view of our training.

Do forgive yourself if you don't follow the plan exactly.
Give yourself permission to move runs around. I like to combine training plans and create my own, factoring in vacations, races I want to do, and other scheduling conflicts. There seems to be a few basic elements in any training plan - a long run, a run with some speed or hills, and rest or easy days between hard workouts. There is much variety in the way that you can put the plan together, but I find that working with my own personal schedule allows me to be much more successful in following a plan. It wasn't until I gave myself permission to stray from the program that I began to actually stick with one.

That being said, I've already strayed from my marathon training program this year. I am using it as a guideline, but I am letting my body lead the way in determining what the day should bring. I will make sure that I hit the number of long runs in the schedule, even if they don't happen on the exact day they are planned for. I will also try to hit the weekly mileage targets, and I will do my best to follow the 3 weeks hard, 1 week easy guideline. We'll see how the rest of the plan works out . . .