Making My Own Training Plan

This month I have officially started Half Ironman training!

I have a book called, Be Iron Fit that I've gotten most of my inspiration from for my training plan, but I keep tweeking it. I'm kind of obsessed with it actually. If you must know. :)

I get obsessed with things way too easily. For example, the other night I laid in bed for like 4 hours thinking about wildflowers. Wildflowers! Seriously!? I had just gotten this idea that I'd like to have our family pictures taken somewhere there are yellow wildflowers since I plan on painting our living room yellow (which is a whole other thing I'm obsessed with!) and I could not stop thinking about it! It was crazy. We had also had brownies for our Sunday night treat, and I'm thinking that proably had something to do with it too. No more brownies at night for me! I was so tired Monday morning that I skipped swimming, and I usually am so excited for swimming!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, my schedule. I don't know if you can tell anything from this picture, but here's what my month has looked like so far (click on the calendar to see it larger):

Basically, I have still been doing swimming 2x a week, and I upped my biking to 3x a week, and lowered my running from 4x to 3x a week.

Wait a minute, what did I do to my running? Now it seems so silly to me that I would do something like run less when running is SO my weakness. It's really what I want to improve most this year. At Utah Half last year, I was pretty happy with my swim time, and very happy with my bike, but I want to cut half an hour off my run! Um, that's a lot.

My friends, Amber and Cheryl, have been running pretty much every day - 5 days a week. They run every weekday, then take the weekend off. I have noticed them getting faster in the past few weeks, while at the same time I've been watching myself get slower. They have totally inspired me to run more! So, I tweeked my schedule, and made it so I'll now be running 5 days a week too! Yay! This is my first week trying it out so we'll see how it goes. I see a lot of miles with the stroller ahead of me. :)

So, basically, here's my weekly schedule:

Monday:

6am: 1 hour master's swim (2000-2500 yards)

9am: 45 min run + intervals

10am: 30 min strength (Nike Training Club)

Tuesday:

6am: 1 hour bike trainer class

9am: 20 min easy run

10am: 30 min pilates video

Wednesday:

6am: 1 hour master's swim (2000-2500 yards)

9am: 45 min run + fartleks or tempo

10am: 30 min strength (Nike Training Club)

Thursday:

6am: 20 min easy run

7am: 30 min pilates video

9am: 1 hour easy bike ride

Friday:

6am: 1 hour master's swim (2000-2500 yards)

9am: 90 minute long run

Saturday:

9am: 2:15 long bike ride

Of course, all these times will be incrementing as I go, this is just where I'm starting out this week. With the added running days, I had to cut down mileage from my usual days too. I'll also be mixing things up a little after my half marathon in June which is right around the time the kids get out of school.

I'm such a creature of habit and just love to have everything planned out like this. I also LOVE that I'm done with all my workouts in the morning. I hate working out in the evening, and almost never do it.

This is really my first time making my own schedule (or at least tweeking one this much) so I'd really, really love to hear what you think about it! Am I doing too much of something, or too little? My A race is 23 weeks away, and you can see my race schedule to the right.

Is it bad to be doing the same things every week? Even if I'm adding on time/intensity?

Also, I'm not sure if a swim and long run on Friday are a good idea. What do you think?

I will try it this week and see how it goes. My friend, Brittany, has kindly offered to take Elle and George Friday so I can do my long run outside and without the stroller! I did my long run early last week. I don't live in an area where I feel comfortable (nor would Pete let me) running outside in the dark so I did most of it on the treadmill and track at the gym, and that just wasn't very fun. Even though it was nice to have it all done by the time the sun came up, I really missed having that long run outside, it makes my week feel more complete!

I feel like I've been doing a really good job so far getting my workouts in, and I feel really good. I'm excited to try this out and see if it makes me faster!