A Running Start

This morning I got up and looked at my phone to check the weather. When I saw that it was 22 degrees, I thought "that's not that cold". I then realized that I had gone crazy and I would be heading off to the gym no matter what for an official start to my half-marathon training program.

I'm going to be using a modified plan from Runner's World. There is a link to the plan I'm hoping to follow on the right hand side of my blog. I'll be running Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays & Sundays. I will say right now that since I'm planning on running with Terrier on most Tuesday mornings, I might not follow this plan 100%, but since Terrier generally incorporates speed work into the workouts, I'm not too worried about it as long as the mileage ends up about the same.

The rest of the days in the plan are supposed to be rest days. I'm guessing that I won't take most of them as complete rest days and I'll likely either do some strength training or some light cardio on those days. We'll have to see how things progress. I'd like to keep biking and swimming a little bit during the next three months just to make sure I don't forget how!

The regular plan from Runner's World is a 9-week plan and I wanted to increase that so that I could use this week to see how I'm recovering from being sick. I also wanted to have another week later on in the plan where I run 11-12 miles, because I know that I'll feel more mentally ready on the day of the race if I've already run 12 miles on my own. Going from 10 to 13.1 seems like too big of a jump for me.

So, this morning I was supposed to do 2 miles, followed by 5 to 7 one-minute aerobic intervals and then another 2 miles. Since I had to do this workout on the treadmill, I already went into it knowing that I wasn't going to like it. I find it really hard to do speedwork on the treadmill. Not to mention that I don't really like the treadmill in general.

I started off just running at 5.5 speed. I think that is going to be my default speed for the next few workouts on the treadmill. It makes me not hate it and I think that's a big thing for me right now. I did the first two miles just fine. I did stop for about 30 seconds or so in the middle of those two miles to blow my nose and have a sip of water from my water bottle. The thing about that was that I learned something very important about the new treadmills at my gym: if you step off the belt and onto the sides of the machine, it will stop automatically since it can tell you're not running anymore. I'm really glad that I found that out before I started doing the intervals!

After the first two miles, I took a quick bathroom break and found myself a new treadmill. Well, technically an old treadmill, but a different one than I was using before. I started running again for just a few seconds at 5.5 and then decided that I would do the intervals at 7.0 speed. I did the first one and thought that it wasn't too bad. By the fifth one, I was exhausted and hungry and wanted to go home and eat some more. Instead, I forced myself to stay on for a few more minutes of running before calling it quits.

I have an entire list of issues from today's run, but I'm really trying not to focus on the fact that I didn't get the miles in that I was supposed to as this is just the first day and it's really a bonus week of running. But, my first issue is really with the treadmill. I find it really hard to do speedwork on them. It's really my own fault. I will be running at 7.0 for the interval in the plan, jump to the side once I've reached the time that I had to increase the speed. Then, instead of really slowing down like I should to recover fully in between the intervals, I just start running again at 5.5. I learned today that I'm going to be too tired too quickly if I don't get the recovery that I need, even if that means walking or really slowly jogging after the intervals.

So, in all, today wasn't a total bust. I ran, which seems like the very first step in this whole process. I will say that my legs are still really hurting from Sunday's lifting session, so I'm thinking that I might have to take tomorrow as a complete rest day in order to give them a little bit of a break.

Run #1
Time: 22:19
Distance: 2.00 miles
Pace: 11:09/mile
Calories: 265
Maximum HR: 182
Average HR: 169

Run #2
Time: 14:49
Distance: 1.50 miles
Pace: 9:52/mile
Calories: 202
Maximum HR: 197
Average HR: 181