Plan of Attack Week #1/31

Last week I gave myself a bit of a break, granted I ran over 8 miles since the Half, but I did not push myself and I pushed Thursday's run till Friday and cut Saturday's short by 2 miles.  I needed to rest, relax and rebuild.

This week is different, training for Chicago starts today!  That is right, I am 31 weeks away.  A few weeks ago when I signed up for Chicago, I put together a hybrid plan based on a Jeff Galloway base builder marathon program for 30 weeks.  He has so many plans and I changed it according to where I needed to be for my long runs in April/May so I can't really point anyone to what I used.  The main purpose, and main goal, is for me to build up a solid base - I never really did this in the past, just kind of increased my miles since September in a random fashion based on how I felt.  I want to plan for this differently, to avoid injury and set a regular schedule for myself.

At first I thought about doing runs during the week based on mileage, but I really like how Jeff Galloway has weekly runs for time and weekend runs for miles!  Makes it a bit easier mentally and granted the time increases, but I'm also sure that I will start to see increases in distance as well within the same time allotments each week.  As I said, I played with the weekend runs to start off with where I am now and then match up with the "program" miles as I really don't want to take a backwards step in distance running over the weekend - mentally I need that.

So, the plan for this week is as follows:
Monday - 35 minutes
Tuesday - Personal Trainer and Massage
Wednesday - 20 minutes
Thursday - 5x800m (around 8:45-9 pace) with 400m recovery at 10
Friday - Rest
Saturday - 9 miles

In addition to the regular schedules, I'm also going to take it easy this week on refined flour and sugar.  No sugary treats or wine for me this week, not that I eat that much anyways, but my body needs a break after vacation and I feel like I need to detox a bit. 

I'm looking forward to training, I like the predictability of it all and working towards a goal!  I have a few 5Ks, 10Ks and Half sprinkled in and really excited to see how my time will benefit from being on a set schedule.

How far in advance do you usually start training for events?  What schedule do you follow?