How to Create Your Own Training Plan (with a Printable PDF!) — Runners Love Yoga

Decide upon your daily mileage.

So, now you use your totals from each weekly row to tentatively pencil in your mileage for each day. Here you want to be relatively steady but also have some variance across days. Thus, you should figure out what your average run needs to be to get to your weekly total with your desired number of days run per week, but you should NOT simply run that number on all your running days.

In other words, if you want to run 30 miles/week in 5 days of running, your average length of run is 6 miles, but don’t just run 6, 6, 6, 6, and then 6 miles. Your body will be happier if you have at least one longer run and one shorter run than the average length run. So, you could do something like: 9-3-6-6-6 or 8-7-6-6-3, etc.

If you are aiming for a longer race, like a half marathon or full marathon, this is 100% something to take into account here too. In general, your long runs should also not just shoot straight up, just like your weekly overall mileage doesn’t go straight up. I like to increase my long runs slowly, by just 1-2 miles/week. You’d be surprised how quickly you actually get to that 20 mile long run in the middle of marathon training. Especially for those long long runs (for me, those are ones which are 16-17+), I take a “down” long run of a lesser amount (maybe 10-14 miles) the following week. This lets your body more fully recover from your longest long runs.

I like to determine my daily mileage by days of the week. This doesn’t have to be super precise, and don’t fret if it changes a little bit here and there as you go, but in general, I think it is very helpful to know, for instance, that Tuesdays are your longest long run besides your actual long run, or that sort of thing. So, just evaluate which days are best suited for your slightly longer runs and take that into account when pencilling in your mileage.

One additional important point to really emphasize here: especially for long runs in the middle of marathon training, I like to often often alternate every other week with one more substantial long run, and one relative shorter long run once I get to around 15-16 miles or so. So instead of just increasing straight up continuously from 15 to around 22 or 23 (my max length as of now) by just adding more and more mileage to the LR each week, I will more slowly increase my long run length by alternating between one week where my LR miles increase, and one where my LR is a lesser, more comfortably completed length. For example, week by week, those long runs might look something like this: 16, 12, 17, 13, 18, 13, 19, 13, 20, 12, 22. Just like when you get beyond the “comfortable” volume for your weekly mileage, proceed a little slower when you get into those longer long runs too.