Starts on Monday. I can't wait. I love training schedules. I'd never followed one before my last training cycle but I found a good one for beginners called Marathon Rookie. It was a pretty simple, 10 week, 4 day running schedule. And I figured something out. I dig structure. I like leaving the house knowing exactly how many miles I am running and what the route will be. I like to plan things out and prepare in advance.
That may be one of the reasons I am holding off on a full for now. I have decided that when I do it- I want to CONQUER it, now merely SURVIVE it. So I am going to put in a full year of running before I tackle it. Get at least 3-4 half's under my belt and several 10 and 5K's. Setting my sights on next fall, 2012.
Since finishing the half last month, I took it easy for a couple weeks running 3-4 days a week. Last week, I ran the fastest I've ever run in the Jingle Bell 5K. After a bit of a chip timing fiasco, I got my official time and did it in 27:19--a full 8 minutes faster than the last time I did one, in Nov of 08. My pace was in the 8 minute mile range...which is crazy fast for me, considering when I started running again in July, I was doing 10-12 minute miles.
The training cycle I just completed gave me an excellent base to build on. And I just want to keep improving from there. So for this training cycle, I am upping my game. Going to incorporate cross training and yoga on my rest days. And do speedwork consistently. I'm down to between a 9-10 minute miles on my runs now...need to work on getting that down for shorter runs and keeping that pace up on longer runs.
Next up-Mercer Island Half 3/25/12. Plan to best my Seattle half time by at least 10 minutes...since I can easily minus about 6 mins from the time I did get for a bathroom/stretching stops. So easy peasy. I got it, no problem!
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