Training Plan Preparations

My husband calls me a gadget girl. He's mostly right. I love my iPhone, iPads, Kindle, and GPS watch. I always want the newest little tech thingamabob to hit the market. But, for some things I'm still a pen and paper girl. I've got this really nice daily planner app, but sometimes I need to see it written out. Planning out my training plans is one of those things that I just have to write out. I grab a notebook and list all the Sunday's until race day. (Sunday is usually my long run day.) Then, I work backwards and write in the long run mileage for each week. Once I have each week planned out, I transfer it to our family calendar so my hubby knows my run schedule and can help keep me accountable.

When I trained for the marathon this spring, I used the Jeff Galloway run/walk method. I'm planning on doing that again this fall for ultra training. I've been doing a lot of research on 50k training plans. Some have a weekly long run mileage goal, and some have a weekly long run time goal. 

So, I've been working to customize a 50k plan that incorporates both. My goal is to get the miles in each week. But, if I'm having a "bad run day", I'll focus on time on my feet rather than distance. With two goals in mind for each long run, I can easily turn a "bad run" into a good run. Learning to overcome those mental obstacles is a part of the training process. I'm going into this ready to overcome them all!

Tell me how you plan out your training! Are you a gadget geek or a pen and paper planner? Maybe you're a good combination of both, like me!? 😉