Does Thinking About Running Count?

Yesterday, I missed two miles of speed work. I did four miles in the morning and was planning to head to the track in the early evening. My wife wanted to start running a little and she thought the track would be a nice place to start. Unfortunately, she got called to take minutes at a school board meeting and we had to cancel our run.

This morning I thought about getting up and putting in the missed miles from yesterday. I sat in bed listening to the sound of the wind wipping leaves around outside and decided that the warm bed seemed like a nicer idea.

So instead of a make-up run, I spent some time planning out my training plan for after the Bidwell Classic in March. There is a possible "next goal" race this summer that I am starting to scratch out a training plan for. So me and my Excel spreadsheet began to see how I can get in the mileage after recovering from my first half marathon. Two goals: add mileage safely (trying to stay near the 10% rule) and get my overall mileage up into the 40 mpw range.

It should be fun!

Four Weeks to Go!

Four weeks from tomorrow I will be running my first Half Marathon.

I can't wait! That means I only have two more weeks of hard training. After that I get two weeks of taper leading to the race. Can I do it? You bet! Last Sunday's long run was 13.4 miles, in the dark, while raining, and over hilly terrain.

Now, just because I can do it, doesn't mean I am taking the next few weeks of training lightly. Here's what the next two weeks have in store:
2/6 9 mile long run
2/8 6 miles with intervals (4x400, 2x800, bleachers)
2/10 7 mile tempo run
2/11 2 miles easy
2/13 15 mile long run
2/15 6 miles with intervals (2x200, 2x400, 2x800, bleachers)
2/17 7 mile tempo run
2/18 2 miles easy
2/20 17 mile long run

After that I head into my taper until the race.

Bidwell Classic here I come. My goal: finish! I'd love to come in under 2 hours, but finishing is the main thing.

Speed Kills!

Speed Kill! At least they say to teenagers who drive too fast.

Well, speed also kills your running plan. Of course, I'm talking more about my little setback--hurt my lower abs all because of last Friday's speed workout and then running my long run on Sunday a little too fast.

So, what speed should I be running? I found a great tool over at McMillan Racing that calculates your proper training paces based on a previous race result. In my case, I plugged in my last 5K time and it spits out this incredibly detailed report that predicts my time in any length race (assuming I've put in the training) and gives me my goal times for training.

Now, I already knew that I did last weeks sprints too fast. But after checking the running calculator, I saw how fast is appropriate. Real numbers: last Friday, I was doing 100m intervals at 18-19 second pace; I'm supposed to be doing them at 22-24 second pace. My long run was also a problem. Sunday, I ran 13.4 in 2:15:00 which works out to 10:04/mile pace. I stoked that I CAN do that, but I should have been closer to an 11 minute mile.

Speed Kills!