McMillan Running

As I mentioned earlier, I'm doing a McMillan plan to get me through November and December, and then I'll decide what I'm doing for next year. The structure is fine for me and I can continue running six days a week. The plan actually has more off days, but they're off, crosstraining or easy. Since I'm accustomed to six days/week and I'm doing the dog running, I want to stay there.

The biggest difference, however, is that the plans is based on minutes rather than miles. It's a strange mindset. It's especially useful for easy runs, but I'm finding it more difficult to slow down when I'm running my minutes. I'm hoping that will shake out.

One thing I like about McMillan -- and running less mileage -- is that I can run my easy and long runs a little faster than I did while following Hansons. A lot of my easy runs end up around a 10-minute pace, which is a little fast for Hansons but within the range for McMillan. I haven't done any speedwork yet, so I don't know how the McMillan paces will work for me then.

On Hansons, all of my speedwork was done using a wide range (5k to 10k pace), and I'll be honest: I mostly floated around my 10k pace, which is around 8:45. Because I changed plans after the scheduled speedwork this week, I won't be doing any until next week (I think it's hills). And that's fine: I have a trail race on Saturday. I'm also doing the Hot Chocolate 5k next Sunday, so that's going to mix up my training a little bit.