This post is LONG overdue, as it's been several days since my last run. I got a GREAT weekend of quality running in, and I have to say I feel GREAT! Saturdays workout was a 30 minute tempo. The course is very familiar, as I've run it hundreds of times. I wanted to use it as a gauge to see where is my fitness for now. My goal was to see how close to 4 miles I could get in that time. I didn't expect to get there, but I needed some kind of baseline since this was the start of marathon training week #1. So, meeting a relatively small group (since there was a race on Sunday), us non racers toed the line at 5:30 on a beautiful Saturday morning. Knowing my goal, I ended up a little farther then where I thought I would at 3.85 miles according to Dr. Garmin. And the beauty, I checked my pace at each mile reminder, and I was always around 7:45....Which, if you calculate the final pace, it's right at 7:45. Nice and consistent. Where do I want to be?? I want to get that down to somewhere between 7:00 and 7:15. That's VERY doable where I'm at right now by race day in mid January. Some of that will come with weight loss. Right now at 186, I'm about 15-20 pounds over where I want to be race day. I would like to be somewhere around 165-170 by then. As the miles increase, the weight will come off. It has to. It won't have anywhere else to go. So, if I lose another 15 pounds (low side), that's going to equate to almost 30 seconds per mile. That gets me right at the low end of where I want to be race day! And the beauty is, I have 4.5 months to get there. That's less then a pound of weight loss per week. VERY VERY DOABLE....and yes....I have the weight to lose.
Sunday was also another great day to run. I don't set a target time, I just like to go out and run, and finish when I feel done. So, out the door I headed at about 7:15. I also take it easy, like a 9:30 pace, with planned water breaks along the way. I managed to get in 7.5 miles and ran for a total of about 1:10 minutes. I was actually gone a total of 1:20, but that 10 mins is par tof my planned water stops. No need to hurry, just take it easy and put the miles on the feet.
Monday, I woke up before my alarm clock which was very very unusual. I wasn't feeling 100%, so I just wanted to take it very easy, and get at least 20 mins in. I managed to get that done. No break neck pace, just a 1 mile out and a one mile back course. Nothing to brag about, that's for sure, but it definitley made a difference in how the legs felt today.
Today's run was a group workout. It's always fun to find out (after you've started) that you're doing a shorter workout then you had mentally planned for. I came in thinking we were doing 16x1/4 mile. I misread the schedule. And thankfully it was 16x1 min. Very nice mental recovery there. And I ran very well.....My first set started off very slowly. I think we ran it at like an 8 min/mile pace. I'll have to go back and look at Dr. Garmin to verify that, but it was almost conversational. I definitely managed to pick up the pace as we went along, and by the end, I was really trying to hang with one of the the faster runners of the group after he passed me. I can thankfully say, he didn't actually gain much distance on me after he made the pass. So it was a GREAT motivator to hang with him on the last 3 sets.
I also plan on meeting with Paul tomorrow morning to get 5 miles in on the big loop. we can take it fairly pedestrian, and still get done with enough time to make my 6am telecon!
Until then, LIVESTRONG and TRAIN HARD!
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