As of this Saturday the Marine Corps Marathon is THREE MONTHS away – and I just TODAY formally sat down and wrote out my training plan.
And hung it on the fridge…
…better late than never I guess!
I am pretty sure I am officially the WORST at following training plans. Other than my first marathon I’ve always sort of just made up my training plan as I went, sticking to my two 3 miles runs a week and then a long run on the weekends increasing mileage until I got to 20 miles a few weeks before the race.
I’ve never run a marathon with a time goal, so this sort of “lazy” training has always worked for me to complete the distance.
I’m not planning to run Marine Corps with a time goal in mind (I personally believe that it’s just not the right race for a time goal), but I really do want to get into a better habit of actually following training plans and doing a little more than my usual short runs during the week (you know, in case I DO want to ever try to train for a marathon time goal!).
The good news is that I’ve been attending the Falmouth Track Club workouts on Wednesday nights, so I’ve at least started doing a little speed work, the only problem is that I just do whatever workout the coach chooses for that night, so I can’t really plan for specific speed workouts in my training plan.
I’m going to start including my “Upcoming Week” in my Weekly Training Recaps to help keep me accountable for sticking to my plan and hopefully that will help!
How are you at following training plans?
Any tips for sticking to one?
Live, Run, Grow 
SUCH A GOOD FEELING! I have one on my fridge and in my office…perfect for obsessing at all hours of the day 🙂
Haha, I feel like I need to find a happy medium between “obsessing” over a training plan and being so laid back I sometimes don’t even make a training plan…
I hear that, it’s been a while (like, years) since the last time I attempted to follow one so for now, life is good.
Congratulations on picking a plan! I just started an 18 week half marathon training plan using the My Asics app. I plan to do a post on it in a few weeks, but for now it looks really balanced and manageable.
I have to admit I sort of just made up my own training plan…without having a specific time goal I’m not really motivated enough to do longer than 3-5 mile mid week runs or run more than 3 times a week so I sort of just do what works for me!
Interested to hear how the My Asics one works out!
I used the plans Jeff Galloway posted through runDisney for Goofy and Dopey and then have used plans from my coach for my last couple marathons. Those work well for me and include usually 3 runs per week, and very occasionally 4. I cross train 2-3 days and have a rest day.
I liked the Jeff Galloway plans (other than the long runs over 20 miles – I adjusted my plan to not include those!). I also run 3 days a week, but I really do need to get better at cross training! I do yoga of course, but I’d like to get in the habit of adding in something different like biking or swimming too!
I’m fantastic at writing out a plan but lousy at follow through! I usually fall back to what works, slowly increasing my mileage until race day. One of these days I’d really like to actually stick with a training plan all the way through!