Training starts tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the big day! I have been counting down to July 22 almost since I finished my first marathon. Today I weighed and measured myself and took some before pics. I'd like to see what kind of changes that my body goes through this time. When I trained for the OKC Memorial Marathon, I was still working 2 jobs, and my eating habits were not so great. There was a lot of redbull, coffee, and mcdonalds in my diet. I gained about 10lbs over the course of training, and it was not all muscle. This time, I'm eating healthier snacks and I'm doing weekly speedwork sessions. I bought a new scale last night that measures weight and body fat percentage. This morning I weighed 102.6 and the body fat percentage was 20.4%. I'm not entirely sure that I trust this new scale, as my weight is about 4lbs less than normal. But we'll see. I'm going to try to track my calories every day on Myfitnesspal.com.

I've been told that the Rt66 course is quite hilly, so I'm adding hills to my longest mid-week run on Tuesdays. The vast majority of my Tuesday runs will be on a treadmill. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm going to do the hills towards the end of the run when my legs are already tired. I hope that it will be enough. I am planning to drive to Yukon to run what I've been told is a legendary hill with some friends at least once this fall. This is my hills plan:

Date                Mileage           Hills Workout

1: July 23       3          1m run, 1m hills, 1m run

2: July 30       3          1m run, 1m hills, 1m run

3: Aug 6          4          1m run, 2m hills, 1m run

4: Aug 13       4          1m run, 2m hills, 1m run

5: Aug 20       5          2m run, 2m hills, 1m run

6: Aug 27       5          2m run, 2m hills, 1m run

7: Sept 3         6          3m run, 2m hills, 1m run

8: Sept 10      6          2m run, 3m hills, 1m run

9: Sept 17      7          3m run, 3m hills, 1m run

10: Sept 24    7          4m run, 2m hills, 1m run

11: Oct 1        8          4m run, 3m hills, 1m run

12: Oct 8        8          5m run, 2m hills, 1m run

13: Oct 15      9          4m run, 4m hills, 1m run

14: Oct 22      10       5m run, 4m hills, 1m run

15: Oct 29      11       5m run, 5m hills, 1m run

16: Nov 5       9          5m run, 4m hills, 1m run

17: Nov 12     6          3m run, 2m hills, 1m run

18: Nov 19     4          Easy run, no hills

                       

One Hill:         1%-5%, then 6%-7% for 4 mins, then back down to 2% for 2 min.     

I have a few goals for this training cycle:

• Track calories every day
• Drink a minimum of 55oz of water daily
• Complete 90% of my scheduled runs
• PR in both the SoS half and Rt66 full

In other news, I have met 2 of my between marathon goals: run a sub-30 minute 5K, and do a 5K race without any walking breaks. Funnily enough, they did not happen in the same race. My sub-30 came on the 4th of July. I ran the Stars & Stripes Forever 5K at Stars & Stripes park. My time was 28:13! My first mile was 8:33, so I went out too fast as usual. I ended up taking 2 brief walking breaks that I can remember.

On Friday, I ran the second race of the Sizzlin Summer Series, the Hotter 5K. It was so very hot! The temp was still 93F at the 8pm starting time. I managed to run the entire race without stopping though! I picked a girl that was running just the right pace that I could keep and I followed her for quite a while. Then I picked it up at about 2.8 miles or so and sprinted to the end. I wish I had started the sprinting just a little sooner though-my time was 30:03. So close to a sub-30! The weekly speedwork has been paying off!

Training starts tomorrow with treadmill sprints in the morning!