GollyGadget
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2017
- Messages
- 2,116
Week 1: A Fresh Start (Jan 22-28)
I started a brand new training plan this week and with that came a clean slate and brand new goals. I spent 2017 focused on completing the WDW Marathon and it proved to be one of my best years running. I ran more miles than ever, setting weekly, monthly, and yearly mileage personal bests. Even though it was a very successful year, there are still some opportunities for improvement and I’m planning to address some of those this time around. The biggest gap I’m focusing on is keeping my motivation high and completing the scheduled workouts. I only completed 68% of the scheduled miles in my last plan, at least 15% was missed due to injury, but the other 15%+ should have been completed. To help with motivation, I’ve scheduled monthly races. This time around, I’ve also reduced days of the week from 6 to 5 which should allow for a bit more flexibility when absolutely necessary.
As for goals, my training plan is designed for crushing a Half Marathon in 3 months. Ultimately, my goal for that race is to break my current PR of 1:50:49. Coach thinks I can possibly run sub 1:45 and I’d be absolutely over the moon if that happened. With a new goal, also comes new pacing. I’ll be doing my best to stick to the pacing below:
WU/CD (Recovery) – 10:43
EA (Easy A) – 10:03
EB (Easy B) – 9:22
LR (Long Run) - 9:00
TP (Tempo) – 7:58
DT (Daniel’s T) – 7:46
DI (Daniel’s I) – 7:07
In other news for the week, I actually signed up for the previously mentioned races. I definitely had to think twice when signing up for the half. Being a frugal person by nature, I like getting the best deal. It was only $10 more to do the full, which means the cost per mile was a lot better of a deal. In the end, I decided to stick with the plan and the half. After last year’s poor showing, I’d like to see what I can do in the half nowadays. The registration asked for my estimated finishing time and proof I could run that. I’m used to that after the WDW Marathon earlier this year. However, there was no information about what would be accepted as proof. I ended up putting a half marathon time from 2016 that’s reasonably close to my estimate, but now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have put my 10 mile race from last September. I sent an email asking for more information about what would be accepted as far as distance and dates. While anxiously waiting for a reply, I found an old copy of the application from 2014.
I’m sure the times have been adjusted, but there’s still a chance that this means I would qualify for a “preferred starting position/seeded number.” That is just next level bonkers to me. It’s the equivalent of telling me I’m an elite.
Initially, I was waiting on the weather forecast before registering for the Chili Chase. Now that the race is part of my training plan, I went ahead and bit the bullet and registered for that as well. Please send good weather vibes! Mid-February is a very dicey time to be scheduling a race. I’m not as worried about the St. Patrick’s day race, but you never know in the Midwest. It could be 10 degrees or it could be 80.
In other somewhat running related news, I think I got my first black toenail. I'm not totally sure because my toenails are so small it's hard to tell and the nail itself is still intact. Anyway, I painted them all red to cover it up!
On with the training recap!
M – EA 3mi + strength
In the past, I’ve always ignored my pacing on easy runs. I would mostly just run them as slow as possible (unless I was on the treadmill, when I would run them at the fastest pace allowed to end that torture quickly). Since coach took the time to actually calculate out my paces, I figured I could at least take a little bit of time and try to hit those paces. We had a small discussion about it, and the important thing is to not go too fast, but I figured I could use the practice as I’m really quite terrible at pacing anything faster than Long Run pace.
Long story short, instead of going at my usual “as slow as possible” pace, I tried to hit the 10:03 +/- 10 seconds. This turned out to be an easy conversational pace with intention. Physically, it was easy but I had to mentally be present to keep the pace going. My miles ended up ticking off at 10:07, 9:57, and 9:58 so I’d say I did a pretty good job.
After the run, it was my first strength training of the year. I haven’t done anything resembling strength training since October. My Fitbit had an ab workout already loaded on it so I decided to try it out. It was only 10 minutes but it was a lot tougher than I imagined. There was nothing crazy about the workout, standard core moves, I’m just that out of shape I guess. Overall, I would say the workout was a good one but it’s tricky to follow along since it’s rather difficult to look at your wrist and do bicycle crunches at the same time. I tried to get Bucky to workout with me but she was more interested in eating her dinosaur. Maybe next time.
Side note - She really needs a haircut.
W – EB 4mi
I was so excited for a clean slate this training plan with no missed runs but I only made it to the second day before I buffed it up. My bag was at my desk ready for a post-work run on Tuesday. Then shortly before lunch, my husband contacted me because he had acquired tickets to see our beloved Badgers play at the University of Iowa. Tip-off was at 6 and it was an hour drive, so I had no time for a run. I guess I maybe could have snuck in a lunch run, but with no showers nearby, I don’t think my coworkers would have appreciated it.
I knew it’d be no problem to shift the easy run to Wednesday, perks of being early in the plan, so I completed the mileage, just a day late. The run itself was good. Again, I tried to dial in my pacing with a goal of 9:12-9:32. Mile splits were 9:34, 9:24, 9:13, and 9:17, so I consider that pretty good. The best part of the run was definitely the scenery though. I haven’t been down to this part of the river to run in a while and got to enjoy some eagle watching while marking off the miles.
Th – EA 3mi
Real talk, I spent over 4 hours at the bar on Wednesday night after my run. That’s not normal at all; we had a friend in town and a group of us went out. The main reason I went home as early as I did is that my running stench was getting too strong to ignore. Anyway, I was exhausted come Thursday. When I got to work, my boss even asked if I had celebrated Wednesday so it must have been noticeable. By the end of the day all I wanted to do was take a nap. Thankfully, the weather was awesome and I knew I needed to take advantage before Snow Miser came back.
By the time I got home, the sun was setting but it was still pretty nice so off we went. If Bucky gets any sort of hint that I might be going for a run, she will not let me out of her sight. Luckily for her, I planned on taking her anyway but it’s pretty amusing to watch.
I wasn’t worry about pacing this run because pacing Bucky is difficult as it is, especially with all of the potty stops she sometimes insists on having. It’s a good thing too because I somehow paused my workout shortly after leaving my street and didn’t realize it until I was over a ½ mi from my house. I resumed it at that point, but now my pacing for the first mile is just an educated guess.
Fr – EB 4mi + strength
Friday was another unseasonably warm day but it also came with 20-30 mph sustained winds with gusts in the 40-59 mph range. Not exactly ideal for running. My coworkers were meeting for drinks after work, so I did my best to squeeze this run in between work and FAW. Since I was running some big hills, once again I decided not to worry about the pace. I ended up with an average pace slower than my recovery pace, so definitely an easy day.
I meant to do my strength training on Thursday because I knew time would be tight, but I totally forgot until I was in the shower. Then I was pressed for time and it didn’t get done…ughh…this was not a very good week for goals.
Sa – EB 5mi
My local running store was having a group run Saturday and I decided I should go. This is totally out of my element. One of my favorite things about running is the alone time. I actually nearly backed out just before, but my husband gave me some encouragement to go.
Part of the run was getting to try the new Altra Duo’s. Since my current favorite pair of shoes is Altra, I wanted to give them a shot. They felt a little big and my foot was sloshing around a bit. The salesman did some fancy lacing which locked my foot in place and they felt fine after that, not amazing, but something I could run in.
Off I went with a group of people I had never met. I’m really pretty terrible at small talk but it was actually a lot of fun learning from the other runners. One of them is going to be attempting a BQ this spring and ran the full marathon at the Kentucky Derby last year. I’m going to try to make it to more of the group runs this year, but no promises. Unfortunately, I had to turn around early because the shoe was rubbing the skin right off the back of my ankle. Somehow, early, still allowed me to complete my 5 miles but now my ankle is in a lot of pain. Guess I should have stuck with the shoes I love.
Weekly Time: 3:10:51
Weekly Miles: 19.2/20 – My plan says it’s supposed to be 20 this week, but I completed all the miles in the daily…. @DopeyBadger
Yearly Miles: 56.9/1254 (4.5%)
Average Weight Change: .6/9 (6.7%) – Yay!
Logged Meals: 14/21 – I didn’t do as well as I hoped here and I don’t have a lot of hope for this week with all the traveling :/
This week’s schedule: I’m not quite sure how this week will flush out. I’m taking a plane to Orlando later today for work. Tuesday, I’ll be working from 6a-8p so that run might need to be moved to Wednesday again. But Wed and Thurs, I'll be working 6a-6p so those days aren't really ideal either. I'll figure something out....
M – EA 5mi + strength
Tu – EB 5mi
Th – EA 6mi
Fr – EB 6mi + strength
Sa – LR 7mi
I started a brand new training plan this week and with that came a clean slate and brand new goals. I spent 2017 focused on completing the WDW Marathon and it proved to be one of my best years running. I ran more miles than ever, setting weekly, monthly, and yearly mileage personal bests. Even though it was a very successful year, there are still some opportunities for improvement and I’m planning to address some of those this time around. The biggest gap I’m focusing on is keeping my motivation high and completing the scheduled workouts. I only completed 68% of the scheduled miles in my last plan, at least 15% was missed due to injury, but the other 15%+ should have been completed. To help with motivation, I’ve scheduled monthly races. This time around, I’ve also reduced days of the week from 6 to 5 which should allow for a bit more flexibility when absolutely necessary.
As for goals, my training plan is designed for crushing a Half Marathon in 3 months. Ultimately, my goal for that race is to break my current PR of 1:50:49. Coach thinks I can possibly run sub 1:45 and I’d be absolutely over the moon if that happened. With a new goal, also comes new pacing. I’ll be doing my best to stick to the pacing below:
WU/CD (Recovery) – 10:43
EA (Easy A) – 10:03
EB (Easy B) – 9:22
LR (Long Run) - 9:00
TP (Tempo) – 7:58
DT (Daniel’s T) – 7:46
DI (Daniel’s I) – 7:07
In other news for the week, I actually signed up for the previously mentioned races. I definitely had to think twice when signing up for the half. Being a frugal person by nature, I like getting the best deal. It was only $10 more to do the full, which means the cost per mile was a lot better of a deal. In the end, I decided to stick with the plan and the half. After last year’s poor showing, I’d like to see what I can do in the half nowadays. The registration asked for my estimated finishing time and proof I could run that. I’m used to that after the WDW Marathon earlier this year. However, there was no information about what would be accepted as proof. I ended up putting a half marathon time from 2016 that’s reasonably close to my estimate, but now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have put my 10 mile race from last September. I sent an email asking for more information about what would be accepted as far as distance and dates. While anxiously waiting for a reply, I found an old copy of the application from 2014.
I’m sure the times have been adjusted, but there’s still a chance that this means I would qualify for a “preferred starting position/seeded number.” That is just next level bonkers to me. It’s the equivalent of telling me I’m an elite.
Initially, I was waiting on the weather forecast before registering for the Chili Chase. Now that the race is part of my training plan, I went ahead and bit the bullet and registered for that as well. Please send good weather vibes! Mid-February is a very dicey time to be scheduling a race. I’m not as worried about the St. Patrick’s day race, but you never know in the Midwest. It could be 10 degrees or it could be 80.
In other somewhat running related news, I think I got my first black toenail. I'm not totally sure because my toenails are so small it's hard to tell and the nail itself is still intact. Anyway, I painted them all red to cover it up!
On with the training recap!
M – EA 3mi + strength
In the past, I’ve always ignored my pacing on easy runs. I would mostly just run them as slow as possible (unless I was on the treadmill, when I would run them at the fastest pace allowed to end that torture quickly). Since coach took the time to actually calculate out my paces, I figured I could at least take a little bit of time and try to hit those paces. We had a small discussion about it, and the important thing is to not go too fast, but I figured I could use the practice as I’m really quite terrible at pacing anything faster than Long Run pace.
Long story short, instead of going at my usual “as slow as possible” pace, I tried to hit the 10:03 +/- 10 seconds. This turned out to be an easy conversational pace with intention. Physically, it was easy but I had to mentally be present to keep the pace going. My miles ended up ticking off at 10:07, 9:57, and 9:58 so I’d say I did a pretty good job.
After the run, it was my first strength training of the year. I haven’t done anything resembling strength training since October. My Fitbit had an ab workout already loaded on it so I decided to try it out. It was only 10 minutes but it was a lot tougher than I imagined. There was nothing crazy about the workout, standard core moves, I’m just that out of shape I guess. Overall, I would say the workout was a good one but it’s tricky to follow along since it’s rather difficult to look at your wrist and do bicycle crunches at the same time. I tried to get Bucky to workout with me but she was more interested in eating her dinosaur. Maybe next time.
Side note - She really needs a haircut.
W – EB 4mi
I was so excited for a clean slate this training plan with no missed runs but I only made it to the second day before I buffed it up. My bag was at my desk ready for a post-work run on Tuesday. Then shortly before lunch, my husband contacted me because he had acquired tickets to see our beloved Badgers play at the University of Iowa. Tip-off was at 6 and it was an hour drive, so I had no time for a run. I guess I maybe could have snuck in a lunch run, but with no showers nearby, I don’t think my coworkers would have appreciated it.
I knew it’d be no problem to shift the easy run to Wednesday, perks of being early in the plan, so I completed the mileage, just a day late. The run itself was good. Again, I tried to dial in my pacing with a goal of 9:12-9:32. Mile splits were 9:34, 9:24, 9:13, and 9:17, so I consider that pretty good. The best part of the run was definitely the scenery though. I haven’t been down to this part of the river to run in a while and got to enjoy some eagle watching while marking off the miles.
Th – EA 3mi
Real talk, I spent over 4 hours at the bar on Wednesday night after my run. That’s not normal at all; we had a friend in town and a group of us went out. The main reason I went home as early as I did is that my running stench was getting too strong to ignore. Anyway, I was exhausted come Thursday. When I got to work, my boss even asked if I had celebrated Wednesday so it must have been noticeable. By the end of the day all I wanted to do was take a nap. Thankfully, the weather was awesome and I knew I needed to take advantage before Snow Miser came back.
By the time I got home, the sun was setting but it was still pretty nice so off we went. If Bucky gets any sort of hint that I might be going for a run, she will not let me out of her sight. Luckily for her, I planned on taking her anyway but it’s pretty amusing to watch.
I wasn’t worry about pacing this run because pacing Bucky is difficult as it is, especially with all of the potty stops she sometimes insists on having. It’s a good thing too because I somehow paused my workout shortly after leaving my street and didn’t realize it until I was over a ½ mi from my house. I resumed it at that point, but now my pacing for the first mile is just an educated guess.
Fr – EB 4mi + strength
Friday was another unseasonably warm day but it also came with 20-30 mph sustained winds with gusts in the 40-59 mph range. Not exactly ideal for running. My coworkers were meeting for drinks after work, so I did my best to squeeze this run in between work and FAW. Since I was running some big hills, once again I decided not to worry about the pace. I ended up with an average pace slower than my recovery pace, so definitely an easy day.
I meant to do my strength training on Thursday because I knew time would be tight, but I totally forgot until I was in the shower. Then I was pressed for time and it didn’t get done…ughh…this was not a very good week for goals.
Sa – EB 5mi
My local running store was having a group run Saturday and I decided I should go. This is totally out of my element. One of my favorite things about running is the alone time. I actually nearly backed out just before, but my husband gave me some encouragement to go.
Part of the run was getting to try the new Altra Duo’s. Since my current favorite pair of shoes is Altra, I wanted to give them a shot. They felt a little big and my foot was sloshing around a bit. The salesman did some fancy lacing which locked my foot in place and they felt fine after that, not amazing, but something I could run in.
Off I went with a group of people I had never met. I’m really pretty terrible at small talk but it was actually a lot of fun learning from the other runners. One of them is going to be attempting a BQ this spring and ran the full marathon at the Kentucky Derby last year. I’m going to try to make it to more of the group runs this year, but no promises. Unfortunately, I had to turn around early because the shoe was rubbing the skin right off the back of my ankle. Somehow, early, still allowed me to complete my 5 miles but now my ankle is in a lot of pain. Guess I should have stuck with the shoes I love.
Weekly Time: 3:10:51
Weekly Miles: 19.2/20 – My plan says it’s supposed to be 20 this week, but I completed all the miles in the daily…. @DopeyBadger
Yearly Miles: 56.9/1254 (4.5%)
Average Weight Change: .6/9 (6.7%) – Yay!
Logged Meals: 14/21 – I didn’t do as well as I hoped here and I don’t have a lot of hope for this week with all the traveling :/
This week’s schedule: I’m not quite sure how this week will flush out. I’m taking a plane to Orlando later today for work. Tuesday, I’ll be working from 6a-8p so that run might need to be moved to Wednesday again. But Wed and Thurs, I'll be working 6a-6p so those days aren't really ideal either. I'll figure something out....
M – EA 5mi + strength
Tu – EB 5mi
Th – EA 6mi
Fr – EB 6mi + strength
Sa – LR 7mi
