Training Plan

As planned, I was out of town for two days and had two days away from the treadmill. I did get to go out for about an hour on cross country skis while away, and had a great yoga class last night aside from the part where I was doing the pose completely wrong which is why it felt so easy, and today I was back at the gym.

While running today I formulated my early training plan. I am not normally a gym goer, and have probably run more on the treadmill in the past 2 weeks (as blogged here) than I have previously in my lifetime. I've just always been a fair weather runner, and sometimes not even then. But now I'm committed to this marathon goal, and I don't want to wait until better weather to get started and though I do not enjoy the treadmill, or the gym, or very much of anything about running indoors, the one benefit is that it's not running in the snow which just doesn't interest me in the least. But because I don't really like the gym, and I'm just getting into this, my plan for the month of February is to make it onto the treadmill 3 times per week, and then to increase it to 4 times per week for March, in the hopes that by April, I'll be able to run outside 5 times per week. Last year we had snow until May, but I'm being optimistic.

By the end of February, I will be running 3 miles, 4 miles and 5 miles as my 3 runs. By the end of March, I will be able to run 14 kms. By the end of April, my long run will be a half marathon distance. Based on how I was able to increase my distance when training for the half marathon last fall, I believe that these are attainable goals.

I'd like to set goals for increasing my pace, but I'm not sure how to be realistic about that as I didn't train that way for the half marathon. My goal then was simply to finish in under 2.5 hours, which was a little too easy. For now, I will do intervals once a week, and will try to increase my pace slightly each week for my short runs.

In pondering all of this as I warmed up on the treadmill, I decided to start those intervals today. I ran with a 5.5 speed setting for 10 minutes, then upped it to 6.5 for 2 minutes and back to 5.5 for 2 minutes and repeated that 5 times. Then I ran at 5.5 for 10 more minutes and then kept going for another few minutes to make sure I ran 4 miles and to finish the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song on my iPod. I was very, very red in the face at the end, but felt as if I could keep running. I like finishing a run still feeling that way.

Back to the gym tomorrow to fit in the third run of the week!