Lesson Learned About Programming

One of the things that I'm trying to learn is how to better program my own workouts.  I learned a few lessons today about programming.  Here's my Cliff's notes:

1. Be sure to program ahead.  
This one sounds obvious, I know.  I generally have an idea each week of what I want to accomplish and how I want to work my body, but I don't do a good enough job of planning each workout far enough in advance.  I found myself finalizing my workout while in the middle of my warm-up at the gym today.  I feel like planning ahead for each workout would allow me to better prepare myself to perform them well.

2. Finding the balance between hard and easy is going to take some time.  
So one of my weaknesses that I'm trying to program around is first, that I'm not a good runner and my stamina is not the greatest.  When I do workouts, I don't have a problem lifting or pushing heavy weight, I have a problem sustaining strength throughout.  I've been trying to incorporate workouts that include push over a relatively extended period of time (as opposed to stuff like "Fran", which I love, but don't want to rely too much on WODs like that).  I like the CrossFit workouts that include running 400 meters and then doing other workouts in between, like "Nancy".  The second weakness that I'm working on is that I don't do well with movements that require simply moving body weight, like pull-ups.  The experience below will show that I have yet to find a balance between hard and easy while still focusing on my weaknesses.

Here's what happened at the gym today.
So today, as I'm debating what I'm going to do, my mind was jumping between two ideas.  The first was to do a "Four rounds for time of: Run 400 meters + something".  My initial thought was to run 400 meters, than do a round of "Cindy".  The other workout I was thinking about doing was "Death by Pull-Up", which is basically this: on a running clock, you do a set of pull-ups equal to the number of the minute that you're on.  First minute = 1 pull-up, second minute = 2 pull-ups...you get the idea.

I decided that I was going to do the "Four rounds of time of..." workout.  I decided on doing a round of Cindy in between each 400 meters.  I finished in about 15:21  (I needed to do a little bit of travel from where I was running to where I was performing "Cindy"), and I wasn't as gassed as I thought I'd be.  It was a good workout, and I broke a great sweat, but I didn't feel as gassed as I had hoped.  I realized that the workout didn't require quite as much push as I had hoped.  Because I felt a little underwhelmed by the workout, I decided that I'd do some sets of "Death by Pull-up".  I did eight minutes of it and then had to leave to get back to work.

Good lessons learned today and I'm appreciative of them as I work on personally programming my workouts.  The next time I decide to do a run + "Cindy" workout, I'm going to do a ladder of rounds of "Cindy" instead.  Run 400 + 1 round, then run 400 + 2 rounds, etc.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Anyone have tips for personal programming?