national half marathon: training plan

So, amidst spluttering about my inability to read, I signed up for the National Half.  Over the weekend, I worked out a training plan, and after much input from my awesome running moms girls, I think it's final.  Final but very flexible.

(click on it to make it much, much larger!)

Many notes:

You'll notice I've laid out mileage, but not pacing.  My only goal for this race is to get to the starting line healthy.  That's it.  I'll probably have rough time goals in my head as I get closer, but I am not setting any at the outset.  Mileage is what's important, not pacing.  I've also left a pretty big spread each week on milage, to give myself the ability to do a little more if I'm feeling good, or shut it down if I'm feeling rough.  As long as I hit somewhere in the weekly range I've targeted, I'll be happy.  I plan on doing track and tempo workouts "light" for much of the first month, because I know the increased intensity is going to wipe me out for a while.  But otherwise, the first 3 weeks of the plan look pretty close to what I'm doing right now.

I don't have a lot of rest days built into the schedule.  I've left room, though, to take off Monday, Wednesday, or Friday as needed throughout.  I love swimming on Monday as a recovery from the weekend, and I think it's unlikely that I'll rest instead of pool run, but Friday will probably turn into a rest day more often than not, and that's okay.  I'm also still planning on lifting 4 days a week - only because my body is so used to it - but if I start to become overly fatigued, I'll cut back or leave out entirely some of the lifting.  And - as I said yesterday - yoga will definitely be in there, but I'm not going to plan when or how much, I'm just going to do what my body asks for as I trundle along.

I've got two tune-up races laid out - the LTRYW 5K on February 13th, and the 4 Courts 4 Miler on March 12th.  The 5K I'll race flat-out, but the 4M I'll decide day-of whether I'm going to race it or just wedge it between the rest of the miles for the day.  I also may run it as a recovery run, and do the long run the following day, depending on how I'm feeling that week.  

And, I just realized as I'm looking at this, we're going on vacation January 3-5.  So I'll probably take all 3 days completely off so I can come back rested and ready to rip a great big hole in this training plan.

Any input or advice?  Snarky comments about how much I LOVE COLORS!?  More thoughts about my purple toes?  Let me have it!