Building up fitness while avoiding injury

When I really got into running last year I didn't have any kind of plan.  I just ran as far as I felt like it.  Sometimes pushing myself go a bit further then my previous run, or to earn a particular badge on SmashRun.  But in retrospect I might have ramped up my running a bit too quickly and that combined with playing soccer led to some ankle and foot problems, and eventually to me injuring my knee.

It seems like it has been a rather long road to recovery.  Probably because I didn't do enough exercises like these: orthoinfo.org/topic.cfmtopic=A00564 I did do some biking and if I get injured again because of running, I will probably be doing a lot more of it.

But for now I will be trying running again.  But this time I will follow a plan.  Earlier in the year I bought the book Daniels' Running Formula (3rd Ed.) by Jack Daniels.  He talks about things like oversterssing your body, diminishing returns, and accelerating setbacks.  Basically you don't want to introduce too much new stress on your body too quickly.  Your body needs to get used to a new level of training for at least 4 weeks before you increase it.  When you do increase your level of training it should be by a small amount.

So with the hope of eventually being able to run long distances without too much worry of injury I have started with the most basic plan outlined in Daniels' book.  He calls it the White Starting Plan.

I started on Monday, September 8, a 5 minute walk, 10 minutes at easy pace, followed by a 5 minute walk.  On Tuesday it was 5 minute walk, 7 minute easy run, 1 minute walk, 7 minute easy run, and 5 minute walk.  (um in the next post I'll discuss how I'm a dumbass and totally misinterpreted how the runs should go...)

On Friday 12 September I participated in the PO2 Craig Blake Memorial Fitness Challenge.  It is a mini-triathlon for the military here in Halifax.  There are some people who do all three parts, swimming, biking, and running.  But most participants are in a team of three.  I was the runner in such a team.  http://www.atlanticchip.ca/events/results-show.php?result=2253  I was a little concerned that it might be too hard on my knee to do a race, but it was only 2km.  But, doing the race helped me determine my VDOT value.  Knowing my VDOT value allows me to know what paces I should use for my training runs.  So now I know that my easy pace should be between 5:39 and 5:59 min/km.  http://www.runsmartproject.com/calculator/

The first four weeks are the same so Monday the 15th was another 5W-10E-5W (again this isn't right, I'll explain in the next post).  During these runs I have only been starting the timer on my GPS watch when I start running and then stopping it when the last run portion ends.  Should I be including the 5 minute walks at the beginning and end too?  It will make my runs seem even slower, but it will add a little distance.

Since these runs are fairly short I have been using them as a warm up and going to the gym afterwards.  Once I start phase II I'll probably change my gym days to Tuesday and Thursday.