Running Plan

I found a running plan that I think will work for me and I started it tonight. I'm not training for anything in particular right now, I'm just running. (It's hard to type a Forest Gump accent). The plan I'm going to follow is the intermediate plan from runninginjuryfree.org.

There are a couple things that I like about it. First off it will get me to a weekly mileage base of 24 miles. Which is a good place to be if I ever decide to train for a half or a full marathon. Second it gets me there slowly, which is probably the best way to avoid getting hurt doing it. I know I said a couple things but I'm going to through in a third as a bonus. It is pretty even mileage throughout the week. Meaning I'm not going to have three or four 3 mile runs during the week then a 10 mile long run on the weekend to get my mileage in. This is one of the thing that the guys at the Hansons-Brooks distance project talk about. I can't find the actual article right now but I know I read it on there someplace.

I'm not quite at the starting point for the plan yet though. So I added a few weeks in front of it to build up to it slowly. I put everything together on a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of how far I should be running and when. I'll probably keep some notes on there as to how well I followed the plan each week. Feel free to check it out here if you'd like.

Log Site Experiment

The past few weeks I've been using Gmaps Pedometer to plan my courses. And I've been using a spreadsheet to log all my runs. While reading some other blogs and forums, I came across the following three sites that people said they use:
MapMyRun
RunningAHEAD
Favorite Run

The Gmaps site has worked ok so far, but I've been far from impressed with the interface. So I've decided to setup accounts at all three of the sites about and enter my past runs starting with the Novartis Run (if I can) and keep track of all my future workouts. I'll try do this through my next race so I can make sure I take advantage of all of the features each site has. I'll post about my experiences and what I think of the sites as I go along. At some point I'm hoping that one site separates itself from the pack. At that point I'll probably start using it exclusively. Who knows, if none of the sites impress me maybe I'll just have to write my own that works how I think it should.

If anyone has any other sites they use leave a comment and I'll add those ones to the list.