Marathon Plans

So far my training plan for all my running has been just to do what Heidi told me to do. Since she was helping her son scale up for a race as well, it has worked out just peachy. My problem now is that I need to start looking at marathon plans for the race in September. Since she isn't running it with me, I have to figure out what to do on my own.

I've looked around at several different options, but I'm not sure what is going to work best for my  often grumpy IT band. The two options I'm currently looking at are the Hal Higdon Novice 1 and the Marathonrookie.com Marathon plan. 

With the Marathonrookie version, it's not very clear where to jump in with where I'm currently running, especially since there's not a half built in. I'm thinking probably somewhere between 6 and 7 would work out if I started now, then I could build in a few step back weeks or longer runs if I felt like I needed them depending on how my body is responding.

With the Hal Higdon one, I could probably start at about week 6 this week since that would fit in with the next half I have scheduled. Then that would give me some extra time during the summer to fit in my other races and back off if the IT band needed it. I like that this one has step back weeks already built in and I could put in the additional long runs if I needed them.

For both of them I'm wondering how my body is going to respond to 4 days a week of running...might have to add that in a little at a time in order to avoid IT band catastrophe.

On an unrelated note...I had my first eye test after LASIK today. 20/15 baby! It has been amazing and I'm oh-so-glad that I went ahead with it. It sure made running that half in the rain much less annoying!