7 mile long run

I've only run 7 miles one other time in my life. To date, it's the longest run. It sure feels different than 6 miles. I felt it more in my joints, and my legs were fatigued at the end. I've contemplated investing in a small hand-held waterbottle, and some Gu, for anything longer than 1 hour. I'd like to see if I can feel a difference.

Goal this coming week is to do yoga or P90X on all my rest days. I need it.

5 miles + Yoga

The gps failed me on this run. When I look back on my laps it makes no sense, and is totally unreliable in terms of speed and distance. I did run 5 miles with a 9:39 average pace, and there were definitely some hills to contend with. Felt good. Maia was also disappointing - super slow and pokey when we were on the road.

Last night was supposed to be hot yoga, but turned out to be regular yoga. Still felt good, and I'm sore with triceps and legs. Even tree pose was challenging, and I could feel all the little muscles in my feet and ankles kicking in since it's been so long.

I'm still not changing body comp. Perhaps yoga is the missing link. I weighed myself after dinner last night and got 134. It's literally been months - months - since I got that. What's up????

Last night I had 1.5 pints, and they were delicious. Not so good for the bod, though.

2 miles - the maintenance run

Yup, just that. A quick 2(.22) miles up and back on the road. Barely broke a sweat. Should have been 11:05, but ran a 10:something and a 8:something. GPS isn't always accurate in that dept though.

Feels good, although I'm not really slimming down like I feel I should be from all these calories burned. I think I've been eating pretty poorly - gluten, beer, excessive dairy (cheese). The excess fat isn't shedding off like it usually does.

Also, Erin talked me out of a new pair of running shoes. I've logged 100 miles since I started keeping track on Daily Mile, and the shoes are from July 2008. I wonder....

6 miles - the long run

Put back 6 miles on my long run on Saturday. Woo Hoo! Kept with the schedule all last week, except for no XT or strengthening. It was all rest, baby. Six miles felt fine, I was just waiting for it to be over, really. The last mile I kicked up the tempo to probably 8:00, or maybe even faster, because my favorite song came on and I got all upbeat. Fun.

Tonight is a two mile maintenance run. Seems so short, and so fun! Beautiful weather but I'm strangely unsettled today. Hormones, perhaps.

5 mile tempo run

This was my first tempo run. I purposefully chose to run on the road where my garmin would get the best satellite reception. I wanted to be able to keep track of my times to get a good idea where I stand when I actually try to run fast. I should have known more about the lap function on the G, but I didn't really understand it and so my laps are all screwed up after mile 2. However, my warm up mile was 10:42, and my next mile was at 7:48! Wow! That's about a minute faster than I should have been going, but I had no idea how to gauge my tempo.

I really didn't enjoy running on the road very much - I think I got too hot to boot.

I realized right before I left to run that I hadn't drunk any water all day. Not a drop. This is unacceptable. After the run my face was bright red and splotchy and stayed that way for the better part of an hour.

That reminds me - these past four or five runs have all felt -hot-. Like my face feels hot and red, and my body temperature is too high for the actual output I'm achieving. Maybe it's time to consider running in cooler times of day, and drinking more water at all times (not just after runs). I'll also try to only consume the calories I really need in case I'm carrying around extra baggage in that dept.

3.4 miles

I felt so good last week, keeping to my first two training runs. Then Saturday came around and I played disc golf with the naive intention of running afterwards. Yeah right. My feet were so sore I couldn't dream of it. Sunday, exact same thing. So there went the possibility of a long run for week 1 and I'm really disappointed.

Today I grappled over keeping to the training plan (2 miles) or trying to make up for lost mileage from last week. I decided to kind of put myself in the middle of the two distances, because there's no way I'm going to add an additional 6 miles on to this week's plan. I've heard that runners shouldn't try and recover lost mileage because of over-training and injury possibility. I don't really think I'm in danger of either one of those things in week one, so I might just try and add here and there this week to make up for the 6 mile long run last week.

Also considering moving the long run to Friday. That leaves weekends open for disc golf and chillaxing.

5 mile run, 2000m swim!

Wednesday I kicked it with 5 miles - ran around town with my garmin, which told me I did 9:38, 9:38, 9:10, 9:25, and then an 11:38 cool down. My warm up mile was also supposed to be in the 11's, but I wasn't feeling it. All this after work. So I'm sticking to it so far.

The funny thing is, I'm much more focused on my 'rest' days - taking advantage of them in preparation for the next run. My new attitude includes a lot of 'just do it', and 'if everyone else can do it, so can you', and 'it's only a 1/2 marathon!'.

In other breaking news, I finally went to the pool and swam 40 laps, laddering free and breast. I did feel like I was going to drown a few times, but kept it strong. I definitely am not sore yet, but am feeling the new movement in my joints.

Today is another 'rest' day, hopefully to be filled with disc golf, and tomorrow is the long run!

the training begins

2 miles. I just got up and did it, even though I was tired and it was 7:30 pm! But whoopie. i am seriously starting my training plan. I was hoping to get to hot yoga tonight, but we worked late and I had a ton of bookkeeping to get done. Tomorrow is my 5 miler - totally doable and fun!

3 miles

Well, today is July 1. Who knew? I managed to get out and run 3 miles on the track today while E played a round of disc golf. We had a really really shitty day, and I knew getting outside and running would at least add one thing to my day that didn't suck. It was actually a fine 3 miles - sortof a warm up for my upcoming training plan that I'm DYING to stick to - and I didn't feel at all out of shape (though my thighs were rubbing together in a quite uncomfortable way!). I'm probably going to have to take tomorrow and Saturday off, but am determined to begin training this week. I'll try and revamp my training plan on runnersworld so I'm all up to date!
In the future - some p90x and swimming!