I’m getting excited. Maybe it was the blissful weather change (shorts and tanktops in January??) or the calendar moving along, but after 8 weeks of “freeform” running, I’m beginning to get the training plan thrill again.

My very first training plan was a 16-weeker started in May for the Philadelphia Distance Run in September. I loved having a schedule to follow so when the race was over, I was quite blue afterwards with nothing to work towards. A couple days later I signed up for another Half and suddenly I was a happy gal with a plan again.

With only 8 weeks before the second Half, I knew my improvement would be less dramatic, so I signed up for a handful of smaller races in the interim to keep my excitement level high. That turned out to be a smart idea, as it improved my racing chops and confidence, as well as showing me what the local talent had to offer (again with those carrots!).

So my race calendar this Spring has two “goal” races: First is the one-year anniversary of my first race, the Clean Air 5K in April. I can’t wait to revisit the origination of my racing mania and measure the improvement. Incidentally, I have many embarrassing hunched-over pictures from that 5K, it being my first race, my running form sucked big ones. I’ve sequestered them on my computer as great “Before” pictures because they’re too ugly to share, so hopefully if Nick’s there again with camera in hand, I’ll have a great one-year “After” photo that doesn’t resemble Darwin’s Evolution.

My second goal race will be the Broad Street 10-miler in May. This will be my first year doing it and is the focus of my training plan (which I just realized starts next Monday…that’s 16 weeks out, yay!!). I’ll be doing more than these two races this Spring, but I like having my schedule build out from the goal races, the better to fill in the periphery.

As far as the training plans I’ve used and will use this time too, they’re all bastardizations of Runners’ World SmartCoach, in which I add both tempos and speed weekly (instead of alternating) and make a few other small changes. I also use it in conjunction with McMillan’s calculator to get a variety of paces instead of the single paces offered by SmartCoach.

A major substitution I’ll be adding this time will be to alternate hill work for some of the intervals. Turns out I have a phenomenal .9 mile hill loop that is absolutely perfect for improving my shoddy hill performances in 2007. I just have to ignore the occasional strewn condom wrapper on the ground. And speaking of speed work, it’ll also be nice to include some shorter intervals instead of the mile repeats I insisted on doing for the Halfs. I’m thinking I might not hate interval work so much if the intervals aren’t so dang long.

And now, I’m off to begin tweaking my new plan. Maybe next post I’ll upload some pics of the spreadsheet/planning calendar I made in Excel, along with the cool McMillan compilation sheets I fashioned together that, when in training mode, give me hours of time-wasting enjoyment before bedtime. Seriously, I can stare at them for a good hour before going to sleep. What a freak, huh?

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