Plan the Work, Work the Plan

This is a cute marathon finisher from the KC marathon. Yes, you can look like that too. If, you're willing to put in the work. Please, put in the work. All people should look that good. It should be a state law.

Sunday is usually a rest day. It's also a good day to plan out the upcoming week's workouts. I can't tell you how many runners who get to the gym without a clue of what they are going to do that day. I've already established my long, and intermediate goals. I can almost work backwards from a race a couple of months away, and plan out the progression of workouts leading to it. And, I will do that. This just serves as a general guide for my weekly planning.

When laying out your plan remeber the hard-easy principle (see Hard-easy, Hard-easy). Also, pick out a primary, and a secondary workout. In otherwords, two main, fairly hard workouts. It's also important to think of these workouts as being written in pencil, not in pen. For instance, I usually do a medium hard run on the 31st route on Mondays. However, yesterdays bicycle ride just kicked my ass, and left me with a stiff and sore back as well. So, today I just did light running. You still want to strive to get that primary and secondary workout in each week.

Here's my plan for the week:
Monday - lunch - 3 easy miles. pm - 2 easy miles, a few sets of weights
Tuesday - 5-miles medium pace
Wednesday (secondary) - combo threashold, high mileage workout (see I Stink, therefore I am) It's basically a 1-mile warmup, 4 X 1-mile intervals at TP (threshold pace), followed by 4 easy miles
Thursday - lunch - weights, pm 4-easy miles
Friday - Lunch group run of 7-miles
Saturday (primary) - Long run, 16-miles easy.