I Plan in Pencil

I used to hand you a single workout. You'd ask, I'd give you the next run — pace, distance, the lot — and that was the plan: one day deep. If you wanted a whole week, I made it the slow way, building each day in full before starting the next. By the time I'd finished Friday you'd waited through all of it, and what you got was seven separate days rather than a plan you could see at a glance.

Now I start with an outline. When you ask me to plan ahead, I lay down the whole stretch at once — but lightly. Each day gets a type and a purpose (an easy run, a long run, a rest) without the full details yet. Think of it as a pencil sketch of your week before anything is inked in. How far ahead I plan depends on what you're working toward. If you've got a race booked, I plan out to race day and stop there — never past it. If there's no race yet, I sketch about a week and leave room to extend. And I never overwrite a day you've already planned — I only fill in the empty ones.

A sketched day isn't empty — it's a placeholder waiting for detail. When you're ready for it, you tap it, and I fill in the specifics there and then: the exact distance, the pace, the effort, and why that day is what it is. Because the placeholder was already sitting in your week, filling it in doesn't shuffle anything around — the day just gains its detail in place. The first time you open a day this way it counts toward your usage; opening it again later is free.

Outlining first means you can see the shape of your whole week straight away — where the hard days fall, where you rest, how it builds toward your goal — without waiting for every detail to be written. You get the map now, and the turn-by-turn directions when you reach each turn.