Who doesn’t love a good training plan? I know I do. It’s hard not to get excited when you see those prescriptive perfect squares on paper telling you exactly what you need to do to attain peak fitness. I’m fairly type A, so when I see a training plan (or make one) my brain locks into it like it’s the final answer to everything. Normally, I’m the kind of runner who HAS to do that workout today because that’s where I put it on paper. I hate it when I forget small details that I was supposed to do like post-run strides or my warm-up routine. In light of the way I am, I’ve surprised myself with the way I’m approaching the training for my first ever marathon. I don’t have a week by week training plan written down. Nor am I following a plan from somewhere like Runner’s World or the BAA or one of those runner mom influencers on YouTube or a Strava plan. Yep, you read that correctly. No plan. This might actually be the first time I have less of a plan for something than Chris.
Thing is, nobody talks about what to do when that perfect plan you had goes to shit. When you have an injury start to creep in or life gets in the way and you’re too exhausted to do what you planned on doing. Or when you drink too much canned wine the night before a workout and can’t join the vertical world until 2PM when it’s already too hot outside. The dread starts to creep in. What am I supposed to do now? That was THE PLAN.
Week 3 felt tough. And even though it’s early into training, it’s not a mystery why. I’ve started to add workouts back in. I’m still doing strength and weights twice a week on harder days. I’m also starting to increase my long run distance. This week I did 9 miles, which was the closest I’ve been to a double digit run in the past five months. The last half of the week was a slog. During my long run, every part of my body felt done for. Breathing felt hard, legs felt heavy, and knee pain was the worst it’s been since training started. Six miles in I was ready for it to be over. Just ask Chris, who was jogging easily next to me. I was complaining the entire time. Partway through that run it dawned on me that increasing overall mileage the next week like I wanted to would not be a smart idea.
Because I’m training with a chronic injury, I knew the tedium of constantly modifying a plan that was already written down was going to make me feel even more hopeless and behind in my training. So, what I’m doing instead is writing what I was able to do down AFTER I do it. It’s not a revolutionary idea, and may seem like the smallest of things, but the mental reframing that it has given me is so valuable. These are a few questions I usually ask myself when thinking about how to approach my run any given day:
What are the big training things you want to accomplish in this 2-4 week period?
Things like increasing my long run to a particular distance, a particular workout I’d like to get in, etc. The big pillars of what you’re supposed to do during marathon training based on research I’ve done.
Is today a good day for one of those things based on how you feel or do you need to run easier?
Some days it’s not going to help me to push through and do something difficult as much as I want to. Particularly if nutrition or sleep has been bad.
What is a reasonable goal or range for what you feel like you can do today?
This is really based on feel in the beginning part of my run. In the first couple of miles I can usually get a sense of whether it’s going to be a rough knee day or not. I love ranges because even hitting the lower end of a range is still completing the goal.
If you can’t do what you wanted to do today, what else can you do?
If pain is a barrier or I’m feeling like running on a particular day would be the hardest thing in the world, I no longer always force myself to buck up and push through. Instead, I ask myself if I can get downstairs to the bike instead. Usually I can do that, and I can still get the aerobic benefit of getting my heart rate up.
Not being able to stick to a training plan or hit a certain weekly mileage feels like a type of failure, which is another reason why it’s so hard to be flexible with them. But making the decision to take a recovery week for Week 4 was made easier by the fact that I don’t have the next 12 weeks mapped out. As I continue to learn about my runner self, I’m learning that the real failure would be not listening to my body. If I simply pushed through in my quest to increase mileage this week, I know I’d reap the consequences later. Or, in the best case scenario, remain intact but feel more burnt out. That’s where I’ve learned to let go. I can’t plan for everything, but I can plan for how I’d like to approach the uncertainty.
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