Half Marathon Training vs. DAR

I have been trying to stay on schedule with my training despite the best efforts of the rest of my life to throw a wrench in it.  But yesterday made me really stop and re-consider some things.

I had always believed I would be a Chapter Regent for one year before becoming the Secretary/Treasurer of the Memphis & Shelby County Regents' Council the second year and then going on to be the President of the Council the third year.  Chapter Regents serve for 3 years, and this would round things out nicely. 

But yesterday I found out that I am S/T THIS year.  Now.  And will be President next.  Which made me have to stop and re-think some goals.

I love running, and running is important to me.  But when I chose to get in the line to become Regent I knew I was going to put everything else behind DAR for those 3 years. 

My chosen half marathon was to be Labor Day weekend.  The first event that I am involved in with the Council is two weeks after that.  I also have travel commitments for my state-level chairmanship during July and August.  So....

I am going to continue to train but am pushing my goal race to October to give me more room.  And to take the pressure of airline tickets and vacation plans off as well.  Instead I will try for the RNR St. Louis.  It is a 5 hour drive and we have family there.  There are also several other races within a 5 hour drive that I could do around that time. 

This also will take off a little pressure while training in a Memphis summer....the humidity was 94% today at 9 a.m.

A Day Late .....

But not a mile short.  Got my 4 miles in today instead, and boy did I need it.  Work has been kind of nuts and today was no exception.  So I was ready to hit the park.  There was some group of kids and moms and they were all gathered around a spot on the running/walking trail, so I decided to detour out into the neighborhood.  Lots more shade and something different as well.  Also a few hills and I guess better training than going around and around the same .9 mile surface.

The heat is still here, but it wasn't awfully humid.  I'm still a sweaty girl when I finish.

Did the Runner's Core Level 1.1 again too.  I really felt it in my abs last time, and this time will be no exception.  But I also was able to do all the sit-ups today so that is a win.  The cats want to help - cat hair + sweaty girl + yoga mat = yuck.  Just in case you were wondering.

Ordered Prancer (aka Mr. Dancer) a couple of new pair of shorts from Road Runner Sports.  They have wonderful customer service, a great shoe finder, and their prices aren't half bad either.  Both of us got new shoes from them this year - him the Brooks Beast which he really loves for its excellent support and width, and the Asics Gel Kayano 19 for me.  I'm really an Asics girl at heart I guess - their shoes seem to just melt onto my feet.  They also have a wider width (I've been told I have big feet for a female runner - how rude!!).

Anyway, I also ordered myself a new fuel belt thing and also some salt caps.  I've heard good things about salt caps, and since I tend to be an empty runner and have a very hard time taking in anything but water during a run I hope that they will be helpful this summer as both temps and distances increase.

I'm going to go get in the shower so I can go to bed with wet hair again tonight.  Fun times.  Until Wednesday - keep dancing!

Slow and Steady Right?

Today was a tough day of tilting at windmills and I knew I needed to run as badly as I wanted to just skip it.

I let myself be very slow.  It was hot, humid, and windy threatening a storm.  We had about 6 sprinkles but no rain.  The wind was helpful, but the humidity was killer.

When I got home I did The Runner's Core workout level 1.  It took about 10 minutes, and I couldn't complete all of it.  Planks for days, but situps will stop me in my tracks every time.  And my balance ball was more inflated than theirs so it was pretty funny - my husband had to help balance me.

Bogart the Amazon spent the entire time giving the yoga mat the hairy eyeball.  He really didn't like that thing, and was growling at it when I was doing planks.  Mark had to reassure him I was ok and was not being eaten by the blue thing.

Then I brought in the balance ball and BD immediately went "tall bird" and felt that he needed to protect me from the awful thing.  I don't blame him - I might have needed protection.

I have no doubt that I am going to feel this workout in the morning.  I am going to try to do core at least 3x a week - either after runs or on nights I am not running is still up in the air.

Yeah, OK, I'm not dead

Or injured.  Or anything that might be a good reason not to be running and blogging.

I ran tonight - not a bad run but not great.  I'm officially on plan.

I downloaded the Hal Higdon's 1/2 Marathon Novice 1 Training Program.  It fought with me on wanting to start today, not next Monday.  But I won.  It works well, and I hope it will make keeping up with my runs a little easier since I don't want the calendar on the fridge while we are trying to sell the house.  It does not, however, sync with Garmin or Daily Mile so I will keep using my Garmin too.  Considering how reliable my iPhone has been with run apps in the past and the GPS data, this is probably a good idea.  Garmin won't cheat me out of that last .20 like the iPhone does.

Let me tell you, if you held Hal at gunpoint I don't think he could sound less enthusiastic than he does in this app.  I'm can't find where to turn off his "cheers" but they made me kind of laugh anyway.  I never knew "You're doing great" could be a dirge.  Anybody remember the old Clear Eyes commercials with Ben Stein - yeah, like that.

I discovered if you loosen the laces on your stability shoes too much, your legs ache and feel like lead.  I tightened them back up and the last mile was so much better.  I also discovered that if you run 7 miles in a week for the first time in months, you might experience some delayed onset muscle soreness.  Yeah, I thought I might be immune or something.....

I've missed running.  It feels very daunting to look at 7 miles last week and think that I want to be able to run 13.1 all at once again when this is over.  But I guess we will go back to baby steps.  One of these days I will be a continuous runner and stop the cycle.

My goal is to run the Covered Bridges Half in New Hampshire on Labor Day weekend.  Wish me luck!!

And immediately a change in plans

So I sent my husband the training plan, and he said great but.....

He mentioned that perhaps this would be ambitious while we are working on selling the house, what with showings and 30 minutes to get the birds and GTFO and probably this being a lot on nights and weekends.

He knows how frustrated I tend to get when my plans don't work.  So.....

I am holding this plan for the 2nd half of the year and going into a 12 week Novice 1 Hal Higdon Half Marathon Plan.

Because I can be taught.

I think I should start spring training now

Then again, I think spring should have started by now too so we all know how that works.  BUT.  I have been reading Run Less, Run Faster and I have decided to give it a shot.  I've based my training on a 39 minute 5k time (which is somewhere between my fastest and my slowest) and I've set it up to start the week after I get back from DAR State Conference.  In between I'm going to try to do a little base building, which is what I've been trying to do for the last month and failing.  ANYWAY.

So my first week of training will look like this:

April 23 - Track Repeats - 8 repeats of 400 meters with a 400 meter recovery interval - target pace for repeats is 2:58 (I've never done repeats, but I understand I can program my trusty Garmin to yell at me appropriately)

April 24 - Cross Training - I am going to use the bike with the trainer for this - 10 minutes easy, 8 minutes tempo, 7 minutes easy (tempo should correspond to about short sentence effort)

April 25 - Tempo Run - 5k (3.1 miles) at 12:50 pace

April 26 - Cross Training - 10 minutes easy, 10 minutes tempo, 5 minutes easy

April 28 - Long Run - 10k (6.1 miles) at 13:20 pace

I know I can do the paces for everything but track and I understand that is supposed to be my major hard workout every week.  I am going for an improved 10k time.  My last 10k was about 1:20 and that was planned as I took it really, really easy.  This 12 week plan will get me through to July, although my goal 10k is actually at the end of June.

Can I work out 5 days a week and keep it up?  Who knows.  I like that the cross training can be done indoors and it is in minutes so should only eat a half hour of my day.  I'm a slow runner, so a simple 5k takes 40 minutes if I don't drive to the park to do it.  Add driving to the park and it takes an hour of my day.

If the plan is too ambitious, I can always recalculate.  But the point is for it to be hard.  Here's to hard work.

It hasn't been much of a week for workouts

So last week was another exercise bust for the most part.  I got in my 5k for jelly bean.  And we spent 6 hours on Saturday painting and another 4 on Sunday scrubbing hardwood floors, so counted 6 points toward my workouts there.  My legs are killing me from doing the painters squats.

The TV room is finished:

 The dining room no longer has wallpaper:

 And the room where we used to have the dining room furniture has been transformed into a formal type living room:

I cannot tell you how different this all looks.  It is very fresh and clean and pretty and if all of our stuff fit and we had a bathtub I could soak in and maybe a better kitchen we might stay.