Thinking of new training plan

Starting to think of an off-season training plan. What I want to accomplish this winter is to become a better runner and swimmer. How I plan to accomlish this is still in the air.



What I feel worked last year was the increase in the frequency of running. I was pretty consistant with my runs as follows.



Tue: Short easy run, bike skills were the focus that day.

Wed: Long run, probably done a little too fast

Fri: Speedwork or hill work on treadmill

Sat: Hill work when at Island lake, moderate distance any other time.

Sun: Run Bike Run brick, stead pace



While I got much faster, I seemed to gain most of my speed and endurance during the months of Jan to May. Why that was? Looking at my log I stopped doing overdistance in May. After that my longest runs were 12 miles with a little bit harder effort. That made me faster but didn't increase my endurance as much. I'm starting to feel that I should have kept the longer run at a lower intensity all the way to the beginning of August. Most of the early long runs were done near an 8:40 pace while the later runs were closer to 8:20.



It was also during the early months that I did speedwork on a regular basis with intervals on the treadmill and tempo runs on the indoor track. The tempo runs were fun cuz I just found someone that ran fast and stuck with them. When I got on the road I ran by myself and just ran a comfortable pace.



The plan for now 'till January is to build back up to 5 runs a week with 3-one hour runs at an easy pace and 2-half hour runs at a quicker pace or something fun. Planned running milage during that time will be 28 to 30 miles a week. In January I'm thinking of a running 30 times in 30 days challenge and see what happens. It would be mostly easy running with a double run on 1 day and 1 day off.



The swimming plan will go close to what I did last year but I'll start training faster earlier. Instead of waiting untill June to work on muscular endurance and speed I will start in February with the Michigan Masters State meet as a race goal. I'll set goals for the distances as I get closer to them. I've allready moved up a lane at my weekly masters workout and will continue with that lane while during the week I will focus 2 of my swims on endurance and 1 on force or muscluar endurance.



So about 16000yds a week in the pool is planned but I will slowly work up to that. I will be taking it easy untill late November.