The Plan

Today’s Run

Time – 49:59
Distance – 4.51 miles
Pace – 11:06 min/mi
Elevation – 198 ft.

Yeah, I’m gonna need to do a little bit more than this, but it’s a start.

The Plan

So, what, you may ask, is The Plan? Let’s put this into perspective:

Today’s “workout” (I’m getting a little loose with the wording already…this should be an interesting post) was a pretty standard one for me. Run 40–50 minutes, somewhere in the neighborhood of 11:30–12:00 min/mi (today was a little faster than normal). Put one foot in front of the other and get some miles down. That’s the obvious part of running.

The less obvious, but no less important, piece of all this is The Plan. How long do I have to train to pull this (THE GOAL) off? When am I going to do it? HOW AM I GOING TO RUN 100 MILES?! The answer, it seems, is just as simple as the obvious part. I’m going to put one foot in front of the other. I’m just going to have to do it with a training plan.

Part of this journey is going to be finding a training plan that will work. I have, secretly buried in the deep, dark places of my brain, an unspoken, yet overwhelmingly lofty and unreasonable, goal that I hope I can acheive. Certainly not blog fodder as of yet, but something that I’ll alude to, tease, and finally, one day, like my virginity, give up in a moment of weakness on some random, over-caffeined, late-night, thesis-writing-session-break binge (Did I mention that I’m due to finish my Master’s in the Spring of 2018? This year will be busy…). In the meantime, I’m going to have to find something that can keep me on track and trail at a regular rate. Some well thought out, structured, and overly-charted document that gives me the Holy Grail/X Marks the Spot/Heart of Davy Jones’ directions I need to: a) NOT injure myself severely, b) NOT cause my family undue harm and heartbreak from unnecessary absences, and c) push me towards that most hidden of goals. The Plan, however, MUST push me to 24 hours at Western States. This is, of course, non-negotiable.

So, the hunt begins. I’ll be scouring the internet, books, magazines, and coaches’ websites to find a training plan that can work. I’ve already read 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald. (In full disclosure, it was an audiobook, but with a 45 minute commute each way, a lot of my “reading” is audiobooks. For the purposes of this blog, I’ll be “reading” some books via the speakers in my MINI Cooper. His name is “Blue,” by the way.) I don’t know if I’ll go down the 80/20 path, but I certainly think that more miles at lower heart rates makes sense given THE GOAL. Meanwhile, I’m going to keep running until someone tells me how to do it better.