Training Plan

The next race I'm planning on running is the Havelock Charity Run. My brother-in-law gets a team together for this event every year. I couldn't make it last year but I ran a 13.49 in 2005. I'll post later on what charity we'll be running for. Our team will run in the 3k event and I have about 7 weeks until the race.

I'm not sure what I want to focus on right now, running farther or running faster. I want to run a marathon someday but since I've only been running for a few weeks it will probably be a couple years at least before I do that. So I'm leaning toward running faster and getting some of my speed back so I can post times that I'm a little bit proud of. I'm going to set my goal at 13 minutes. That would be cutting off almost a minute per mile from the pace I ran last race. I think it's achievable though because it is a shorter race and I'll have a lot more miles on my legs.

Since I'm not an expert on running or anything remotely close I did what I do best, search the internet. I found a number of different training schedules and I've decided to go with About.com's beginner 5k program. Since it is an 8 week plan and for a 5k not a 3k I'm going to skip week seven. I decided on this plan over others (someday I might post about them) for a couple of different reasons. This program is pretty simple compared to some of the other plans. I like that they have some speed work involved, most of the other plans were just about adding miles. The miles that it suggests I run seem about right to me, especially since I'm training for a 3k.

I'm going to plan on doing Run 1 on Sundays. I'll do Run 2 on either Mondays or Tuesdays, but Tuesdays are more likely. Run 3 will always be on Wednesday and Run 4 on Saturday mornings.