McMillan HM Training: Week 1

Daily plan email.

Last week was my first week of my McMillan half-marathon training plan. It's a 10-week program that will train me for the Fort Ben Half-Marathon in early October. I found the plan within Strava Premium (now called "Summit"). McMillan is known for his race pace calculator that can be used to find training paces and race equivalencies. He also has a coaching business with various detailed plans. The Strava McMillan plans cut across race distances and ability levels (beginner to advanced), but are pretty basic. I'm using the intermediate plan with 4 runs per week (Tu, Th, Sa, Su). The other days are rest or very easy cross-training (or short easy runs).

I love starting new training plans, but I rarely finish them. I easily get bored. Or injured. Or I simply skip runs and never get back on track. The structure tends to weigh me down. We'll see how long I stick to this training plan. It has potential. Not too many runs/week, daily reminders, plan that varies weekly. Running based on minutes, not miles. Plus, I respect Greg McMillan. Let's see how last week went.

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: 50 minute fartlek
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 60 minute with 1 km cruise intervals
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 40 minutes easy
Sunday: 90 minute long run

Week 2 of the plan

I did all the runs, and rest days, as stated in the program, but I cut the Thursday cruise intervals short--I finished 4 x 1km intervals and should have done 6. Still, I kept the spirit of the program alive. Week 1 is done and it felt good. Can I keep this going for week 2? Not sure. I'll give a blog update next week!