Training starts Monday. Before it does, I want to put on the record that the plan guiding Week 1 is not the plan I first wrote. It's the second version — and Dr. Reddy hasn't even finished reviewing it yet. I changed it myself, three days before the start date, because I stopped trusting my own first draft.

What the original plan looked like

My first pass was a straight-line ramp: 25 km in Week 1, climbing to 55 km by Week 5, then holding there. It had one strength session a week, stacked the hardest running days back to back, and pushed the long run to 32 km by Week 6 — the same distance I've now scheduled as the peak long run of the entire plan, in Week 13. On paper it looked disciplined. Looked at next to the commonly cited 10%-per-week mileage guideline, it looked reckless: the jump from Week 1 to Week 5 alone is roughly a 120% increase in five weeks, with no cutback week anywhere in sight.

01
What I thought
A steady, aggressive ramp was fine because I'd "push through" the early discomfort — the plan that got me to 55 km/week fastest was the best plan.
02
What Dr. Reddy thought
Awaiting his review — this is the part of the framework that isn't filled in yet, and won't be until he's actually reviewed it.
03
What we did
I rewrote the ramp myself against standard progression guidance before his review started, added cutback weeks, split the hard sessions apart, and doubled the strength work. Not consensus — a unilateral, self-aware fix.
04
What happened
Awaiting outcome. This section will be filled in as training weeks actually complete.

What changed, concretely

  • The mileage ramp now follows roughly a 10%-per-week increase, with a deliberate cutback week every fourth week (Weeks 4, 8, and 12) instead of a flat climb.
  • The long run now peaks at 32 km in Week 13, not Week 6 — six weeks later, and with far more base fitness underneath it.
  • Strength training doubled from one session a week to two, on non-consecutive days.
  • The two hardest running sessions of each week are no longer scheduled back to back.

The full before/after numbers are on the Plan page, including the week-by-week table for both versions and the formal change-history entry.

Why I didn't wait for the doctor review

I could have left the aggressive version in place until Dr. Reddy formally reviewed it and told me what was wrong with it. That would have made for a cleaner "before/after" story, frankly — expert catches the mistake, mistake gets fixed. But it also would have meant walking into Week 1 on a plan I already didn't believe in, just to preserve a neater narrative arc. So I fixed the part I could see was wrong, using ordinary published training guidance, and left his review to catch whatever I can't see. If his review surfaces more problems, that becomes a v3, recorded the same way this one was: dated, explained, and linked back here — not folded in silently.

Week 1 starts Monday: three easy runs, two strength sessions, and a long run to close the week at a target of 24 km total. Nothing has been logged yet. The Dashboard will start filling in as it does.