Training

I officially signed up for the Lewis & Clark Half-Marathon in October and was looking online for training plans. I found one, and then another, and then got my copy of Runner's World with its half-marathon focus. I tried one of its workouts with poor results. My fault; the workout was beyond me and I pretty much knew that going into the day's run.

I'm a fan of Runner's World on facebook, and the same day as that run I saw an item about their new Smart Coach iPhone app. I guess they've had Smart Coach as an online training tool for some time, but I didn't realize it, and I really like having it right there on my phone. You're able to enter a recent race or mile time, choose your goal distance, set the date of your goal race, and get a training plan customized for you. At $.99 for the app, I was sold. So far, I'm happy with it. I especially like that there's a glossary so that people like me, who half the time don't remember what the heck some of these terms mean (even with Wendy's help!).

This was the first week of my new training plan, and I was wondering a little how that would go since the boys and I left for Wisconsin on Sunday morning to drop off Jocko at volleyball camp/so the rest of us could visit some good friends nearby. My friend's husband is a triathlete and has run and biked since the days when I asked him things like, "Why do you want to run in a marathon when you know you're not going to win?" and gave him a hard time about spending $1,100 on a bike, so she understands training.

My plan called for 2 easy miles on Monday, a 5 mile tempo workout on Wednesday, and a 6 mile easy long run on Saturday.

Monday's plan: 2 miles, 10:55 pace.
Monday's run: 2.01 miles, 21 min., 10:11 pace.

Wednesday's plan: 5 miles: 1 mile warmup, 3 mi @ 9:18, 1 mile cooldown
*MUCH more achievable tempo pace than the one I tried last week of 8:54. This one was a stretch for me, though.
Wednesday's run: 5.08 miles, 51 min., 10:06 pace.
Mile 1: (warmup) 10:56
Mile 2: (goal 9:18) 9:01 (success!!)
Mile 3: (goal 9:18) 8:48 (REALLY??)
Mile 4: (goal 9:18) 9:58 (bleh)
Mile 5: (cooldown) 12:06

I'm pretty happy with that. Now if I can just get myself out early enough on Saturday to run before a family wedding, I'll have completed week 1.

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