I've completed the Derby Festival Mini Marathon (1/2 marathon) twice (2008 and 2010) and I'm itching to do another. Nashville has a 1/2 and full marathon the same day as Louisville does, and as I have a friend in graduate school in Vanderbilt who likes to run so we decided to sign up for it together! It is the St. Jude Country Music Marathon that is part of the Rock 'n Roll Marathon series.
My training started on Monday and as I am Type A I created an Excel spreadsheet to guide me on my way. This year I am doing a different type of training plan and so far I love it! Instead of doing mileage based training, I am doing minute based training. For example, instead of having "Run 3 miles easy" on the schedule, I have "Run 30 minutes easy." For me, there is much less pressure that way. If I run 3 miles in 30 minutes that is great, and if I don't then that's fine too. It seems that if you have 3 miles to run, you want to get them over with as soon as possible. However, there's no way getting around running 30 minutes any faster than time naturally progresses, so you just have to go with the flow.
These were my workouts for last week:
Monday: 30 minutes comfortable
Tuesday: 40 minutes with hills (instead I did a 60 minute spinning class and we simulated hills)
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: 30 minutes
Friday: 25 minute tempo (I actually did only 20 minutes and did 9 minute miles)
Saturday: 45 minutes comfortable (average pace was around 10 min miles)
Sunday: Rest (I didn't run, but I swam laps for 30 minutes)
I also strength trained on either Monday or Thursday and I can't remember which!
Overall I believe my first week was a success and I think I'm really going to enjoy my time-based training plan. The plan calls for two rest days a week, but I think I'm going to take just one rest day and reserve the other for spinning/Bikram or hot yoga/swimming. However, it will be nice to have that second rest day should I need it that week.
I hope everyone had a great start to 2012!
I like the idea of time-based training, that definitely takes some pressure off and makes things more fun.
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