This Year’s Training Plan.

I am, dear reader, sloppy and undisciplined in most things. By which I mean, I do the minimum I need to do to get by and accomplish my goals. Often my goals are fairly lofty, and thus require a modicum of effort and discipline to achieve, but even then I do only what I think I have to do to succeed and do not go the “extra mile” to thrive and truly excel. This is why I’m a half-way decent pianist, for example. I’m good enough for me.

And that all applies to running too. If I did track workouts and intervals and hill training and blah blah blah I’m sure I would be much faster than I am. But that all requires a lot of work. And since my satisfaction comes from finishing, rather than from maximizing my speed over long distances, I don’t do those things very often. Certainly not often enough for them to have performance effects. I have never done a track workout.

So I designed a nice, undisciplined, sloppy marathon training schedule that will get me to the end, and allow me to complete another 26.2 mile run in late November.

As I wrote before, this is about 65 miles less than last year’s plan. Mostly because I don’t have 3 mile recovery runs on Sunday. I don’t know what kind of running I’ll get in when I travel, but I’m not going to knock myself out about it. Rome is hilly. To hell with that.

But I know that this plan will get me to the end, and have me ready to run 26.2 miles on the 20th of November. I don’t know how fast,  and I don’t know how much it will hurt. But I know I can do it because I’ve done it before. And I know that when I’ve worked hard, I’ve improved. I expect to improve again. But if I don’t, I don’t. That’s ok. I just want to finish and collect a medal.

And I think maybe I start looking for another triathlon to compete in…