The "New" Week

So the January issue of Runner's World has provided me countless minutes of entertainment. This story makes the blog for numerous reasons, starting with the author, whose name I initially mis-read (exchange the 'oo' for a 'u'). Then, the article just got better! Second, I love their approach to solving the problem of trying to cram all of your quality runs into a 7-day week. Instead of re-defining your training schedule... re-define week! Awesome, I love non-traditional approaches... just validates my reasoning that I need to get better at getting found and not improve my sense of direction or local geographical knowledge. Third, there is a clearly defined method for choosing the number of days in your "week" that involves math (note: I don't like their order, so I might have revised it a bit, and added some of my own suggestions based upon what coach has us do because I think that SK is smarter than MB):

1. Choose a race
2. Figure out how long you have until it
3. Identify key workouts (speed, tempo, and long days)... it's also a good idea to mix things up to add variety to your training
4. Figure out how long you have to give yourself between them so you don't wind up injured
5. Add up the days
6. Do math (i.e., divide the time you have left by the length of the training cycle... I had a chemistry book in high school that would "solve" problems by saying "do calculus" and then give the solution)
7. Plot it to make sure your not increasing mileage too quickly, but still meet your goal (wahooo... even more reason why Excel makes the best training log... and it involves taking a derivative... wow)