Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Following the Plan

So...I have a problem with moderation.  My mother says that the only time I got C's was when the teacher averaged the number of A's and F's I'd received that term.  Oddly enough, then, one of my goals for this training season is to set achievable goals and achieve them without feeling the need to exceed them....and potentially hurt myself in the process. 

WIthout a trainer I'm kind of doing this whole half marathon/marathon training year by the seat of my pants.  I know that I can do the half marathon distance...I did it just two weekends ago.  I'd like to improve my times and beat the pants off of last year's time when the local May 1/2 marathon comes up. Next, I'd like to go on to do a full marathon in the fall.  I think this is a reasonable goal, and I should have the fitness foundation to do it safely at that point. 

With these goals in mind, I'm looking to get more out of my runs this year than merely putting in the mileage.  I'm putting up some better numbers, but everything has been moderate-hard intensity, and the best available literature tells me that A)I'm probably setting myself up for injury and B)I'm probably not making the gains that I could be making.

Enter the need for more intentional workouts.  The first couple I tried bombed terribly.  I would like to think I am a better runner than I am, and my "planned" runs crushed me like a bug.  Today was the first interval run that I managed to do exactly according to plan.  I did a nice warm up, followed by 5 intervals at a 3:1 fast/slow ratio, then completed my miles.  It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that my overall pace was a few seconds slower than my "usual" pace, but my fast segments beat the pants off of my usual pace.  I was definately proud of this, and will be interested to see what kinds of gains might come from consistant interval training.   I was more proud of the fact that I was able to complete the workout according to plan--well mostly, I bumped the pace a tiny bit to hit an even mile number at the end, but had the energy to complete the workout strong and not dead. 

The intervals also had the bonus of breaking up the monotony of the treadmill.  I have gone from being a strictly treadmill girl to someone who would really rather be outside.  Character building, however, was last weekend.  AMA wasn't going to be thrilled about me running in single digits after the water bottle fiasco of last Saturday.  So, today's planned training run worked out well.  With bad weather forecast for the rest of the week, I'm really just hoping that my long run doesn't have to be on the treadmill too.  In the mean time...hurrah for intervals!


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