I was up earlier than I probably should have been this morning and surprisingly it wasn’t as cold as they said it would be so I went out for my first run of the new year.

I need to start my running base again before I can start training for anything. In fact, I promised to not sign up for anything more than a 5k until I have that base built and I feel confident in it.  I didn’t run much through December simply because I just didn’t feel like it.  And because I am not a natural runner (meaning I haven’t been running my whole life) a lot of my issues in 2012 were related to if not ‘overuse.’ It’s time to train smarter and really do it right. So I researched the heck out of safely building base mileage and then how to train off of your base mileage. To say the least it was overwhelming, but I think I have an idea on how to go about it.

Here’s what I came up with for this week to start the base of my base building (if that makes sense).

Week 1 – 1 mile run 4x and 2 cross training sessions

Run 1 – an easy run.  That was today’s run just ran a little came home and stretched. Strenuous it was not, but it felt good.

Run 2 – a speed run. 30 seconds faster than my easy run.

Run 3 – another easy run.

Run 4 – a slow run. 30 seconds slower than my slowest easy run (from now on this will be turtle pace)

If you are wondering why such low mileage it’s because I’m trying to build a solid base and to build it safely. And to be honest, I’m not even sure my body is built for a 4 day a week running program so I’m going to try to train my body to be okay with doing it; we’ll see what happens.  Yes, I’m experimenting with my body and not worrying too much about pace…yet. For now it’s about retraining the way I run/train.  And I feel in order to do that lower mileage to start is the way to go for me.

Anyone ever start from complete running scratch and have to retrain themselves how to train?  How’d it work out? Any Tips?