Tarmac Meditations #54: Shocker! No Plan is Not a Plan

As an exercise in self-motivation, Michael reflects on the importance of having a training plan for running.

If you have no running plan, and I mostly don’t, then training is where you find it. When you are young and working out physically at both work and play, as I was, training kind of happened. When I swam competitively or ran track, the training sessions were there to be attended; the events were a matter of finding the competitors’ entrance after you got off the bus.

The years-gone-by come to require more planning. The Internet is filled with training plans for runners. The gal in the picture probably hasn’t read one of them. She trains with the Joe Henderson Marathon Team; she has trained with them now for nearly six years. The long runs, the key to both the program’s success and the intense loyalty of its participants to the marathon and the coach, are on Sundays. She, Jean, has shown up for nearly all of them. She has run 17 marathons, some faster, some slower, all steady as she goes.

Her plan requires balancing kids, her mother, her job, her commute, her social life, her fabulous chocolate chip cookies, and like that. A life.

I have read all of the training plans although I quit doing that after I started to run again for the pleasure/pain/prayer-like aspects of running into my 60s. It occurred to me just now that I haven’t been running long (distance) since my surgeries, but it’s time to remember that  no plan is not a plan; and that a plan can be simple;  and that I ought to have one.

Run a mile, see how you feel. That’s a plan. Run every weekday for a mile or more, take a day off every now and then, and run longer x 2 one day on the weekend. That’s also a plan. Run long on the weekend, increasing by 5 percent (if every week); by 10% (if every other week). That’s also a plan. Run daily, run slowly, don’t eat like a pig (Ernst Van Aaken said that). Yes, it’s a plan.

Part of any running plan is to go to a good running store, and assess whether or not they know what they are doing. One criteria is that there should be all types of people (body types) selling, it is quiet, there is a sense of running history in the place, there is treadmill or other such gear for stride analysis, and there are running groups for all levels that are organized out of the store.

So why say all this? On account of  the fact that I need to remember what I know.

I took a rest day on Friday, felt lousy yesterday (Saturday), and worked early this morning. It will be three days without running, let alone running slowly or long. As for the eating like a pig thing; well, it was not my best food weekend.

So. My plan. Run daily. Write it down. Run slowly, as if I had more than one speed. Write it down. Run long, two hours building to four on the weekend. Rest the other day. Write it down. Don’t eat like a pig, and keep track of the fuel input, says Matt Fitzgerald, so as to support the output for more fun and better health. Write it down.

Going to lift now, chop wood later, and write down my goals for the week. Now’s there’s a plan inside the other plan, if you see what I mean?