First off, I’m a pretty spontaneous person. I’ve never been great at sticking to a plan.

Second, I like to run long clips at a time—a few short miles can never really get my juices flowing.

Third, I don’t have a whole lot of free time. When you combine all these together, it makes sticking to a marathon training plan difficult for me.

I’m currently training for the Chicago and the Marine Corps Marathons, both of which are this coming October, and I’m trying to hold myself more accountable to mytraining plan. With an hour commute to the office each day, the idea is to get up early—like 5 a.m. early—and run before the drive.

Great plan, but that doesn’t always happen. So I tell myself I’ll make up for it when I get home at night after that same hour-long commute. Seems easy enough, but I don’t always feel like running when I get home, or often I have something else scheduled like quality time with my daughter or friends. Real life happens when regular people (like me) train for marathons.

I’m not saying I don’t try to follow my training plan. I stay consistent with the weekly mileage (in total) because when I miss a day, I’ll just tack those miles onto my next run. But I know this is not how the plan works, and I should be better about staying on the regimen.

I’ve run four marathons to date and did not follow a specific training plan for any of them. Each experience, from training to race day, has been completely different.

She Runs to Help Children New York City Marathon in 2008. I ran 19 miles and walked the remainder of the course. Naïve as a new runner (I ran my first road race, The Blue Cross Broad Street Run, in May 2008), I did not respect the training that was needed to complete a full 26.2.

Two years later I ran the Philadelphia Marathon with a better than 2-hour PR at 4:25:21. I struggled through, and at this point decided the half marathon distance was more my speed and raced no more than 13.1 miles for the next few years.

Fast forward to 2015 where my job as at technical representative in the running industry brought me back to the NYC Marathon, this time as a vendor, not a participant. All of the excitement from the buzz at the expo, cheering on friends, and meeting folks that travelled from all over the world to participate gave me marathon fever—it was a true high!

I knew I wanted to run a full marathon again. I headed home to Philly, got myself a bib for the Philadelphia Marathon, and started training with only 20 days to go until race day. I logged miles everyday and ran one 20 miler the weekend before the race to make sure my nutrition was in check. Race day could not have gone any better, and I grabbed another big PR—this time with a 3:58:02. I was hooked on the idea that if I just worked harder, I could run even faster the next time.

April 2016, I ran the Health - Injuries. I didn’t train hard. Still part of me assumed the gift of my 20-day training plan to sub 4-hour marathon would come around a second time. It didn’t.

Everything that could have gone wrong on race day did. I went out too fast, I choked on my first Honey Stinger, and vomited all over myself at mile seven. I was mentally checked out at mile 14, ran out of Nuun at mile 19, and my abs seized up at mile 22. It was a grueling 4:39:22, and this time I was simply happy to have it over with.

Which brings us back to today and the idea of sticking to a plan. I know I have a problem. Just this slumbering I had four miles scheduled and I ran 10 because, well, I’m a spontaneous/busy person. When I have time to run long … I run long!

But I also know nothing has felt better than crossing the finish line strong and breaking that 4-hour barrier last November in Philadelphia, and I really want to experience that again. If I want to run a couple of enjoyable marathons this October, and feel like that again, I know I should consider getting better about sticking to a plan.

We’ll see how that goes over the next several weeks.

* * *

Suzanne is training in preparation for the 2016 Chicago Marathon with Runner’s World VIP. To learn how you can be part of the RW VIP program, visit runnersworld.com/vip.