my journey to becoming a runner

Friday, August 22, 2008

8 Week Running Plan

Here is my new plan. Either blogger won't let me upload Word files to my blog or I am just technologically unsavvy. But hey, I do have a Master's Degree in Information Technology. I guess that's how I found a way around this debacle. I made a chart, printed it off, took a picture of it and uploaded the photo instead. So, it's a little blurry, but I think readable.


The plan consists of 4 running days. Tuesdays running speed intervals (what I did yesterday, going fast and then slow, eventually I will be doing more than just one minute.) Thursdays I usually have more time, so I want to do some slow running. Running books always say to schedule a nice long run, where you don't care about speed and time. Well that doesn't make sense to me, because I always care about speed and time and really no running can be classified as "nice". So instead I have a "slow" day where I run the given distance (generally more than a 5k) at any rate I wish. No pressure! On Saturdays I will work on running hills. This is an outdoor activity, so I may want to move it to a day I am not in the gym already. As I did last week, I will run down my .25 mile hill and walk/jog back up. Finally, Sunday is 5k day. I will attempt to run a 5k every Sunday, getting faster each week. I will allow myself to take breaks if necessary, but I will do the whole 3.1 miles. Of course there is also a day to do other stuff, like try out the super-cool new equipment in the gym. (That's me trying to be positive!) And there are three days of weight training that I have yet to discover! Good luck to me!

I am trying to get Jennifer to follow along. She is planning on running the 5k in Atlanta with us. She is hesitant, but I told her I would give her a star for each day she followed the plan (rest days excluded) and after ten stars, I will buy her lunch at Subway. Who can beat that? I wish someone would buy me lunch for following the plan. It's a lot cheaper for me than hiring a personal trainer though. And will probably motivate me to get to the gym more too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't I already have 2 gold stars from that chart??? I feel like I'm in kindergarten....