It’s easy for me to lose my confidence in running. An uncomfortable run or a slower pace is all it takes for me to doubt how far I’ve come. Doing a really fast speed that made me feel proud a few days ago, becomes meaningless after an achy run.
I try to not think about running soon after a difficult run, and eventually when I think about my training with a cooler head, I pretty much know where I stand.
I think I can figure out where I stand training wise, I know what to expect when I go to a race, I know what speed I’ll be able to pull when I do speed work. Taking the bad runs as something that happens, and those really too good runs as something that happen as well, there’s a balance, a happy medium, a pace I can hold for 10K and a pace I can hold for 1K, that’s just the way it works.
I ran 39K/24.2M this weekend, and it was great. 25K/15.5M on Friday, and 14K/8.7M this morning.
I follow a training plan because I enjoy the number’s game, and because my mind works like that, it needs to know what to do, it needs to plan in advance how far I’ll be running and at what pace. Sometimes I want to forget about racing and even about getting faster, I want to run because I like it, without paying attention who passes me on my route and who I pass. Running is fun, healthy, and it makes me happy.
Do you follow a running training plan? If yes, is it to run longer/faster/improve in any other way?
2 Cups 'N Run 
I follow a training plan if I have an actual race I’m training for. If I’m not, I’ll loosely follow a plan that will keep my mileage and speed up to an extent until I’m ready to full-on train for another race.
I wish I was capable of doing just that!