Getting Back On Schedule

Since Boston my running fell apart.  It wasn't from the expected post marathon blues rather from injuries.  I thought I was being smart post marathon taking a full week off and being cautious of my running.  Maybe I wasn't cautious enough or maybe the injury was just waiting to occur because of bio mechanics.  Regardless, I'm extremely pleased to be back running.

I have many blogging ideas bouncing around in my head so maybe that my running is back, my blogging frequency will increase.  It's funny where time goes.  Because I was spending time at the PT, fitting in work and then doing exercises at home, time just disappeared. Kind of like that last homemade chocolate chip cookie....gone.

My next race is a half marathon at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.  Last year's race was incredibly beautiful and very challenging. The last 3 uphill miles kicked my butt and I wanted to be race ready this year.  Being sidelined with the injuries has me less prepared than where I wanted to be but with 7 weeks to go there is still lots of training time and confidence building opportunities.

My New Running Schedule

1. To come up with my training schedule I grabbed the calendar and figured out there were 7 weeks till the race.
2. Next I wrote Mon through Sunday across a paper and 1 to 7 representing the weeks down the side. 
3. To mimic the race, I'm training at South Mountain starting at the top running down and saving the uphill for the end of the run.  I've learned from past experience to limit my South Mountain hill runs to every other week and based on the 7 week schedule, I could fit 3 in starting week 1. I wrote in my long runs at South Mountain and then filled in the other weeks with long runs increasing the mileage.
4. I know I run Monday, Tuesday (track) and Thursday and filled in mileage of 4-6 miles.  These distances work well in my schedule.
5. 2 weeks into the schedule I wanted to add in a little bit more mileage and added a recovery run on Sunday's.

Things I considered putting together my schedule

• Did I follow the 10% rule?
• Did I limit the days of running consecutively to no more than 3? (Monday's is a morning run and Tuesday is an evening run so I don't count that as consecutive)
• Do I have taper miles in?
• Did I reduce my miles every 4-6 weeks?  Since this is a short schedule I have a small reduction 4 weeks into it. If it was a 16 week schedule I would cut the mileage 25% for the off weeks.

On my off days I will do PT exercises and maybe swim also.  Getting in my planks and some of my other exercises is going to be very important if I want to stay out of the PT office in the future. 

Having a running schedule makes the training not so daunting for the race and is very motivating.  Do you use a training schedule for your races?  If you aren't training for anything do you have a running schedule?

Happy Running!