Came across this tweet from Hal Higdon. Hal's a bit of a legend in the running community and offers up plenty of sage advice. This one dovetails nicely into one of the points from the last blog about going easy of yourself:

"There are no magic formulas. Training programs are important in meeting goals, but it's impossible to design a fit-all program for everyone's needs. As long as you follow the general pattern of your training program, you should be able to achieve success."

Good ole training programs. Whenever I put one together it usually provides an immediate burst of excitement and motivation...and then that fades. I've run marathons strictly adhering to a certain plan, and I've trained for them completely haphazardly with nothing resembling a plan. For me, the latter seems to work better because it leads to less burnout. I love his advice about simply following a general pattern - this seems more sustainable and can achieve great results. We are all different and nobody responds the same to a certain training program. Have fun with it, spice it up, switch it around and eventually you'll find what works for you. It's likely not to be the same thing that works for me, your spouse, or a world champion. Give yourself the chance to figure out what that looks like for you.