Thursday, December 29, 2011

Half Marathon Adventure

Actually I should probably entitle this blogging adventure because I'm doing this post to see how it works. But I am over a month further into my half marathon training. At times I have to fight off the temptation to try and run rather than run/walk it or to run some of my run/walk training run/walks. So far I've convinced myself better to take a 1 minute walk break every 4 minutes.
I'm really looking forward to running in cooler weather where my heart rate should be lower at a faster pace, particularly after starting to run at 4:15 in the afternoon a couple of weeks ago on a day where the temperature was around 90 at that time and more like 100 with the humidity factored in. I ended up having to walk for about an hour until the sun started going down and it wasn't so hot. But I started at 5:50 am last week and that was a lot better. Tomorrow I change from 4/2 intervals on my long run to 4/1 so am looking forward to seeing how that goes - particularly since it's been a bit cooler the last two days because of it being overcast and raining at times. It's great that running 2 1/2 hours hasn't been as difficult as I'd thought.
I'm still struggling with trying to fit in more swimming and bike rides. I didn't get to ride at all last week since Christmas cancelled my Sunday bike ride but I did get in about an hour and 20 minutes this week on Tuesday since our office is closed this week. Then a 2,700 swim in 1 hour and 18 minutes the next day. Hopefully I can ride again on Sunday for some decent bike time this week. I'm not sure if the weather will cooperate though.
I'm looking online for various coaching opportunities when I get to Miami and looking for the best deal on an underwater video swim analysis and perhaps a better gait analysis than I'll get at a running shoe store though I'll see how it goes at the running shoe store first.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Furlough Plans

After trying to find the “perfect” olympic distance triathlon to do on furlough in May or June I’m now registered for the Nautica South Beach Triathlon April 1 since furlough plans come mid-April got a bit muddy. It looks like you can still finish if you go over 4 hours. Training will be a bit complicated since the day before I registered for the IMG Miami half marathon on Jan 29. I decided it was doable if I run walk. Finishing this will give me a lot more confidence on finishing an olympic tri. Now I’m working on training plans. And I’ve finally decided to start blogging to document this adventure. I did my first training run for the half marathon yesterday. It was my first time to try to run/walk and not just run. It seemed easier than just trying to run. I’ll have to see how things go when the distance increases. This was only 6.22K.