My New Training Schedule

I love my new training schedule!

I had to cancel the Key West 50 mile ultra this May due to financial and time restraints. Would you believe, these wonderful people gave me all my money back and said they hoped to see me there next year, and that is what I am hoping for too.

Now I'm focusing on the 24 hour Lone Ranger in July.

The Lone Ranger feels like the perfect ultra for me this year. Some of the reasons I am so excited about this race are:

1) It’s much closer in location, so won’t cost as much to get there.

2) One of my best running buddies in the whole wide world is planning on coming to this event, and I have a feeling I will be able to talk a few more of my best running buddies into coming.

3) You run around this beautiful 8 mile loop in Philly as many times as you feel like and are able to in 24 hours and when you’re not running, you are camping out under the stars with a bunch of other runners.


4) I know what to expect. I got to pace for my friend Tara last year when she ran this race, so I have an idea of what to expect.

5) Something about running for 24 hours, even though that is much longer than the average 9-11 hours it would take to run 50 miles, sounds like less to commit to than running 50 miles.

I don’t know if it’s that I’m learning I would much prefer distance than speed, so the longer the distance, it always sounds more attractive than running at a certain speed, or if it’s that I have two more months to train for it, or what.

What I do know is that when I wrote out my training schedule, I was even more excited about running this race. This is my kind of training schedule.

Instead of saying what I will do in mileage every day for the next 162 days, I have planned my weekly mileage from now ‘till the race. How I get that weekly mileage in is up to me, I just have two rules that I’m following.

I won’t increase my overall weekly mileage by more than 10% from one week to the next and my longest run will not exceed 50% of my mileage for that week.

In addition, I have given myself a basic template for the week. Monday is hill training. Tuesday is recovery day with an easy run and some cross training. Wednesday is speed training. Thursday is a rest day. Friday and Saturday are long runs. Sunday is another recovery day of easy running and cross training.

It will be up to me to decide how long each of these runs are, as long as I complete my mileage for the week, so the more I get done early in the week, the less I am forced to do later on in the week.

I started this week with 30 miles and my longest mileage week is 85 miles, followed by a three week taper before the 24 hour race.

So far I am learning that I have to have a lot of discipline, maybe even more so than if I had every day spelled out ahead of time, to get my mileage in. I have always been a big last minute crammer, so I am trying not to do that now.

Next week I will have to make more of an effort to get out the door when daycare hours are open at the gym so I don't have to cut my runs short.

But so far I am very happy with my new training schedule.