Training Week 1

Interesting first week of training for Hood to Coast and Twin Cities Marathon.

Monday was Memorial Day and the first official day of training. My plan (a modified FIRST plan) called for a speed workout of 6 x (1 min fast, 3 mins easy) with the 10 min warm up first and then a 10 min cool down following. Since I was lucky enough to have the day off on Monday, I decided not to tie myself to a time and meet with a group for a workout. I instead went to the J in the morning and used their outdoor 'dirt' track for my workout. I'm not sure how big this track is (I think it's 1/8 of a mile) but since my training was time based I didn't feel it mattered. During the warm up I noticed dark clouds rolling in. Since I didn't hear thunder or see any lightning, I wasn't too worried. After the 4th 1 min fast/3 min easy session, the clouds were almost over the field and I started getting a tad worried. After my 5th session, I decided to head inside and finish on the treadmill. As I reached the front door to the J I started hearing big rain drops. Before I hit the inside door to enter the gym area the bottom fell out and it was a complete down pour. It was an interesting scene from inside the windows of the gym on the treadmill. Lightning, thunder, slanted rain made the time on the treadmill go by a bit faster.

The FIRST program only requires you to run 3 focused runs a week which allows for a great deal of cross training. You can add a run or two for cross training and to prepare for H2C, I've added 3 runs. One is a Tuesday hilly 2.4mi run. This week this run was an uneventful, humid and hot (87*) run. But I felt strong and that's what counts. The second and third runs are my '2 a day' runs for H2C. I'd originally thought I'd just run an extra run Saturday evenings to get in a '2 a day' day, but have figured out that with a busy social calendar, this would be impossible. So Thursday mornings I run before work and after work. That puts about 9 hours between runs, which may turn out to be too much time. But I've not been able to find a training program for a relay race so I'll have to wing it as best I can. Thursdays runs didn't go well. A side stitch in the morning and heartburn in the evening. Not sure about the cause of the sidestitch but I've traced the heartburn to peanuts and peanut butter in a Clif Mojo bar I had for snack. The important thing is that my legs felt good and strong for these runs.

Wednesday's run was the second official training run for the FIRST program and mother nature wasn't on board with that run either. This run is a tempo run and the plan called for 2 easy miles, 2 fast miles, 2 easy miles. I arrived at CRC in the rain to run with the group. I was the only girl in a group of about 12-14 runners. The thunder and lightning were rolling in as we gathered on the front porch. I told the group when at start time that they could go ahead and start or wait out the lightning. You know men. If one said 'let's roll' the others have to follow. So I watched as all but one of them took off in the rain and lightning. Two more late comers showed up and we used a blackberry to watch a radar screen showing intense storms right over our location. When it finally passed it was close to 7:30pm and the four of us headed out. Rounding a corner in the 3rd mile I saw some cloud to cloud lightning and decided to call it a night after 4 miles. It seemed stupid to risk death to train to run a 4:15 hour marathon.

My long run this week, and the third run in the FIRST program series, called for 8 miles at a pace of 10:05 (planned marathon pace + 30 secs). In case you're not mathematically inclined, my planned race pace is 9:35. Because it was only 8 miles, less than I'd run the week before, and I didn't have to meet anyone at a specific time, I lazed around in the morning and didn't get started running until 8:15. It was already 87* and the humidity was on full blast. It was a tough run because of the heat, but surprisingly there were a few moments when I felt pretty good. I missed my overall goal time of 1:20:40 by about 3 minutes. I'm going to blame the heat and humidity for that and let it pass.

In all the first week was less than sucessful. But I'm not going to let that cloud the rest of the training. Weather happens, life happens and you have to learn to run through it.