structure is good

Like many runners out there, I started my running career way back in July 2006 with CoolRunning.com's world famous Couch-to-5K plan. It literally took me from 0 to about 10 miles a week in 8 or 10 weeks or whatever it is. The point is that the structure of having an established plan of what I was going to run today and next week was incredibly helpful to me. Just that extra mental effort of coming up with what I'm going to run that day was a deterrent, albeit a minor one, to actually going out there and running. (Personal productivity guru David Allen talks about this in his bestseller Getting Things Done. One of his theses is do all the thinking about something up front so that when you are actually in the place to do the work, you are not forced to think and do. You just have to turn the widget or whatever because all the mental preparation has been done.) Since completing the plan, I have sort of just been coasting. For the last several weeks, I have just been trying to do 3 miles a few times a week with something of an eye for increasing my total mileage to something around 12-15 miles per week. At the start of every run, or earlier that day, I say to myself something like "OK, 3 miles on the dread-mill at the Y. Woo-friggin'-hoo." Yesterday, I had the notion of running 4 miles at lunch and did it.

So what now? I am feeling the need for some structure because I have been slipping both in terms of my motivation and my sense of progress toward this mythic state of being called "fitness." CoolRunning.com has a 10K plan, but it involves intervals and tempo runs, which I have no interest in doing. I know, just plug a 3 or 4 mile run to replace them, but I'm lazy.

So my question is do you know of a good training schedule for somebody wanting to run no more than about 20 miles a week? I don't want to get fast, and I don't ever want to run more than 10 kilometers unless I am being chased that far. All I want is something to hang in my cube or tape into my journal that says "Today, run 3 miles with some hills. Tomorrow, rest up for Friday's 5 miler."

Tags: planning, running, jogging