Recap

In the past month or so, I've gotten up to 14 miles for my long run. I've registered for one sprint distance triathlon which is 2 weeks before my marathon and also joined a triathlon class at my gym. I am considering attempting a half ironman triathlon in August. Finally, I'm aiming for Ironman Florida in 2008.

Tomorrow, 15 miles.

Its been a while

I haven't posted updates in a while, but I've been running. I'm in week 3 of my training. Today I ran 7 miles. I am getting faster, my average time today was 7:42 per mile. That is better, but I need to be faster than that. I have a 13 mile run coming up on Saturday. This will be the second longest distance I've ever run, after the half marathon which was 13.1 miles. I'm actually pumped to run it.

2 weeks from Saturday I will run 14 miles, which will be the longest I've ever done. Bring it on.

9 miles

I got a 9 mile run in today. This made my legs incredibly sore. I was also running slower that I would have liked to, but I need to build my speed back up to where I was at last August. That will take some time.

The fact that I went 9 miles and didn't feel too bad is very encouraging for me though.

What a crappy week

In the last week I've had an inflamed throat, pink eye, a cold, and an ear infection. I'm about 90% recovered (the ear infection is still lingering), and thats good enough for me. I have run the past 2 days in the gym on a treadmill because I didn't want to run outside when it is really cold.

It seems that today I'm being given an early birthday gift. It is going to be 30 degrees outside. I am definitely running outside in that. I just gotta go to work for a bit first and finish up some stuff.

Hopefully after nearly a week off I can get back to form quickly.

The running sickness

Ok, so I went for my run on Thursday and made it two miles. It was pretty cold out so thats as far as I went. Later that evening I just started to feel like crap again. I woke up Friday morning feeling like I had the worst cold of my life. The cold, dry air irritated my throat and made it swell up.

I felt better and better as the day wore on yesterday, but it is now Saturday and I am still not completely better. The swelling is gone for the most part, but now I have a bunch of mucus, just like if I had a cold, except that it is all in my throat. My nose is fine. I'm going to take one more day off and hopefully by tomorrow I will be 100%

The only other bad thing is that it is going to be brutally cold outside until about Wednesday or Thursday this week. I signed up at a gym a few nights ago, so I guess I'll have to go run on the treadmills to at least get some mileage in. I may go lift weights later today, depending on how I feel. I haven't lifted since probably October or November and I really need to get going on that again.

Ouch

So I went to check out the YMCA yesterday and ran on their indoor track. I HATE running indoors. I finished 1.5 miles and headed out of there. When I got outside, I realized that it was not TOO cold out, so I drove back to my apartment and changed into my running clothes. I ended up getting another 3.7 miles in outside. After that, I was sitting around when all of the sudden I got really tired. I'm thinking that I didn't get enough calories at supper last night. Anyway, I just went to bed at that point and fell asleep instantly.

I'm keeping a running journal to watch my daily and weekly mileage. The journal runs Monday through Sunday. Last week, I put in 12.4 miles. So far this week I have 6.2 miles. I'm headed out for a run now, so hopefully this week I can get at least 15 miles in.

Registered for marathon

I sent my registration in for the marathon on Monday. I just checked online and the check has cleared. So I made it into the race before it filled up. This should provide extra motivation for me, as now I'm registered for the race and I've paid my cash. I will be pushed to train hard because I don't want to back out of something that I've committed to and paid for.

Not as bad as I thought

I got my GPS today and took it for a run. I ran 2.2 miles in about 18 minutes. I was able to sustain my old pace for that long before I got a terrible side ache and had to stop. It was weird because I felt strong up until then and then that hit me out of nowhere. At least I know that I'm starting off better than I thought I would. If I take it a little slower, I'll be able to put in some longer distance runs and work my way back up to my old speed and beyond.

The GPS is incredibly cool. I plugged it in and within maybe 2 seconds I was able to view my total time, total pace, a map of where I ran, and graphs of speed vs elevation vs pace vs grade over the time of my run. Later, I will be able to compare runs to each other to see how my speeds compared. What a cool training tool.

Also, my speed peaked around the 1.25 mile mark. I don't think this is significant, but I found it in the chart and I think it is cool.

26.2 - A Slight Change

I was surfing around the web today and came across a different marathon training plan. In this plan, you only run 3 days a week as opposed to the 5 days that most plans call for. On the other 2 days you do cross training. I figured that this would be a better plan for me to do. It will let me work on swimming and biking during my training. This way, I will be closer to being ready for my first triathlon after I finish the marathon. I've decided to do this plan instead.

The other thing is that this plan is 16 weeks long, as opposed to the 20 weeks for the plan that I was going to follow. This gives me more time to build up a base and get ready for those long runs that I'll be doing every Saturday.

New toy

I ordered this guy on Friday morning before work. It is a GPS receiver that straps onto my wrist and keeps track of my distance. This will be the second most important tool for me to train with, since I don't know distances around Cedar Rapids yet. I can make sure that I am running as far as the training plan calls for every day.

The most important tool is my iPod Shuffle.

My Garmin Forerunner 205 (I guess I forgot to tell you what it was) should get here on Tuesday, just in time for day 1.

26.2 - the pregame

First off, welcome to my new blog. Thanks for reading.

Secondly, I have decided to run in Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota in June. I will start training for it on Tuesday, so I figured I could use this as an opportunity to post my progress, as well as any random thoughts about any random things that come into my mind along the way.

My running background is brief. I started running in spring 2005 when I decided that I wanted to lose weight and get in shape. In August 2006 I ran a half marathon in a time of just over 1 hour and 46 minutes. I averaged just over 8 minutes a mile, which was slightly slower than my goal time. I took about 3 months off of running after that because I was burned out. Now I'm motivated to run a full marathon, driven by the desire to complete an Ironman Triathlon in the next few years.

I'll give frequent updates of my progress on here. So you know, I start training this coming Tuesday with a 3 mile run. I think that tomorrow I will order a Garmin Forerunner GPS because I just moved to Iowa and I have no running routes like I had back in Fargo, North Dakota. I need the Garmin to make sure I run enough to keep up with my training plan.