I have wrapped up the Jack Daniels “White Starting Plan”. I plan to stick with his “Fitness” training plans to more slowly work up my running volume. I think muscular strength loss was a contributing factor to my problems leading up to April’s marathon and my issues in the last training cycle. So I’m taking the running volume slow so I can focus more on strength.

My physical therapy is on pause until I hit a point where pain is keeping me from running and doesn't resolve with home exercises within a week.

The next fitness plan is the “Red” plan, which moves up from a minimum of 3 days a week to 4 days a week. This is in addition to increased distance for each run. To ease the transition, I’m doing another 4 weeks of the final phase of the “White” plan, but with 4 days of running instead of the 3 I had been doing. Then I’ll move to the “Red” plan at 4 days a week. This will roughly split the volume increase with this intermediate phase.

So for the next 4 weeks, my weeks will look like this:

1. Monday: 30 minutes easy + 6 strides + 6 minutes easy
2. Wednesday: 10 minutes easy + 5 strides + 10 minutes easy + 5 strides + 10 minutes easy
3. Thursday: 10 minutes easy + 5 strides + 10 minutes easy + 5 strides + 10 minutes easy
4. Saturday: 30 minutes easy + 6 strides + 6 minutes easy

I’ll still try to do my PT stretches and exercises, too.