The 10% Rule???

So the rough plan between now and July 12 when I jog The Boilermaker is to run as many smaller races as possible, gradually working my distance up to a 10K by April-ish. My runs presently are only consisting of 2 mile runs at lunch on Monday, Wednesday & Friday, and usually a longer (3-4 mile) run on Saturday or Sunday. In 2 weeks, I plan to start banging out 3 miles on my lunch hour rather than the 2 that I’m presently doing.

Since I am not a professional runner (pfffftt…that was an understatement), I don’t know much about training for a 15K. My loving sister (who drops her cell phone in the toilet sometimes) gave me the training program that she followed for her Boilermaker training last year. However, I know that I can’t start that program until 12 weeks out from the race. In the process of searching for a running log that would interface with my blog, I found the fabulous Log Your Run website, and it is a website that jogging dreams are made of. Not only did I find a really cool little blog gadget that will show my current week of running for all to see, but it also keeps track of my records, personal best, race results, shoe mileage, weight…this website is my new BFF (sorry Karie).

I went backwards and logged 2 months' worth of runs into my new personalized running log (thankfully I had this info already because I'm an accountant and basically exist on this planet to create spreadsheets for everything...jogging included). Upon entering my past runs, I started poking around at the reports. This was the first one I found, and I was a little disturbed:



I was alarmed immediately by all of the red bars. Upon reading the fine print, I found out about the 10% rule. WHY hasn’t anyone ever told me about the 10% rule?! I’m outraged.

Sorry knee. I hope you'll forgive me. I didn't know.