Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Let the Training Begin!

I'm officially training for the Albuquerque Half Marathon, as of Monday. Woot! Coach asked for my goal and I told him that my primary objective is to be able to run this race, finishing pain-free and uninjured. A PR would be nice, but not at the expense of the primary objective. And so it begins...

I got my training schedule and immediately felt that I was behind schedule because I didn't run Monday before work. Luckily, I was able to get out of work a little early and get my run in before the sun went down. One thing that I noticed was that my schedule has me running 4x week. I need to talk to Coach about that because I usually stick to a 3x week running plan for injury prevention. For now I will try to hit two of the three mid-week runs and consider the third a bonus. And of course, be sure to do the long runs on the weekend.

Monday: 4 miles easy.

I chose a dirt trail for this one and took it nice and easy. I was so happy to be running after work again even if I was kind of in a rush to beat the sunset. I ended up running a pace of 11:43.

Tuesday: 2 miles steady (at half marathon pace, 10:20-10:40) with one mile warm-up & cool down.

For this one I opted to run on a hard surface in order to to hit the steady paces. It seems I overshot my pace targets a bit and ended up at 10K pace instead. I attribute this to not having a pacing buddy with me. When the running group starts mid-week runs, it will be easier to stay on pace. At least I got the benefit of two faster miles. And it was a nice confidence boost for kicking off my training.

mile 1: 11:02
mile 2: 9:55
mile 3: 9:58
mile 4: 11:35

Next run scheduled for Thursday.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get the Thursday run in, but that's okay. I have 8 miles on the schedule for Saturday, I don't anticipate any issues with that one.

p.s. Thanks for the compliments on the t-shirt quilt. I've given details on who created it to a few of you who asked if I had your email. For anyone else who's interested, just email me.

18 comments:

  1. Good luck with your training. You started off really good! :)

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  2. Good start to your training plan. How neat that you have your own coach!

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  3. Excellent start to your training!

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  4. Go Girl!!! Good for you to start your training. I only run 3 - 4 times per week and then swim or cycle.

    BTW, I LOVE your t-shirt quilt, that is just stunning. Wish we had some awesome running t's up here. Ours are B.O.R.I.N.G......

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  5. Yay! Good luck with the half marathon training kick-off! Half marathons are my favorite race:)

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  6. Exciting! Enjoy your training!

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  7. Good luck as you begin your training!

    I keep wanting to get my race shirts made into a t-shirt quilt, but haven't gotten around to investigating having it made.

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  8. those are good primary goals! enjoy your training =)

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  9. Nice job! I'm so excited to find some events to do this spring and start running again. I really missed it the last year!

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  10. Woohoo! I'm excited to follow your training for this half-marathon!

    Where did you find your coach, out of curiosity?

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  11. Yay for a half marathon! I'm excited to hear more about your training! And I LOVE that t shirt quilt. I want to do one once I get enough T shirts! :)

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  12. Good luck! Enjoy the training. It is always exciting to run with a goal in mind.

    Believe it or not, sometimes running more short runs during the week will actually help prevent injury. The higher your overall mileage the less of a jolt to your system the long run is. Your body will recover from that long run better if it is not 50% of your total mileage for the week. I am sure you will find the right mix.

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  13. Sounds like your training plan is off to a good start!

    And I love the race quilt from your last post! I've been thinking about doing something like that with some of my shirts. I just need to pick out which shirts I want to use.

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  14. Yay for half marathon training! :)

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  15. Great start to your HM training!

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  16. Great way to start off your training. It sounds like you have a solid plan

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