A Snag...

While doing yardwork this afternoon the dogs barreled me over and I twisted my ankle some. It hurt a little just after, but then felt okay to walk on. I decided to still try and go for a run. I ran for 10 minutes, but I could still feel it, and it wasn't getting any better. So we walk for another 35 minutes. Hopefully my ankle feels better in the morning; it's not swollen or anything.

Tomorrow's run was supposed to be 20-30 minutes. So I'm going to swap today and tomorrow and assuming everything is good tomorrow, do the 40-50 tomorrow and count today's as the 20-30.

We went out with friends who are staying with me last night, and T worked a 12 hr shift again today. He said he would likely be too tired to run after, so he is going to make it up tomorrow or Thursdays (a XT day).

So we're not the best at following a plan... but we're trying!

Monday's XT Completed

After work yesterday, I went to the gym and did 45 minutes of Hill Intervals in the bike while I read. It felt quite good :-) It seems pretty easy to fit in the training exercise so far, but once my normal work schedule resumes tomorrow I think things will be a little more tricky.

Halfways through January T will be increasing his work schedule as well, so hopefully we can make something work between the two of us.

Also, another friend is thinking about joining us as well! So far I'm the only girl though. :-/ (Which means I'll probably get my butt kicked... although the idea of uber training and showing up the boys is extremely tempting!)

Today is a 40-50 minute run...

Jogging over Walking!

This morning I went to walk the puppydog around the block (~1mi). Just planning on walking, I was in sweats and a big sweatshirt. However, the urge to jog took over and we jogged most of it. It actually felt better to jog than to walk. Yay for getting back into the running mentality!

Interrupted by Life Already!

So the plan was the run for about 30 minutes today. About 10am this morning, we discovered a water pipe outside had burst. So we (and by we I mean mainly T) spent the next many hours finding and turning off the main water line,running to T's house to shower, digging a hole to figure out what pipes we needed, multiple runs to Lowes, and fixing the pipe. Then after the dogs sneaked out a few time, T fixed one fence and put a new latch on another, while I got busy with the leaf blower trying to clean out behind the bushes in the front of my yard. I filled up more than 6 30 gal bags of leaves.

Then it was shower and our dinner date we had planned, and now we are about to watch a movie by a fire. So no run today, but lots of physical activity! T is working all day tomorrow and I'll do some XT at the gym and some more yardwork. On the training plan tomorrow is the first official day and it's a XT day anyways...

So here's to life ::raises wine glass::

Day 1 & 2 of Training: Completed!

The exercising part of training is going... the eating/nutrition part: not so much yet. Friday we ran about 2.9 miles in 27 minutes, then cool down walked the remaining 3 minutes. We did some stretching after that.

Yesterday was XT day. T went to the gym and did 30 minutes in the gym. I went to my gym and did 35 minutes on the bike, easy. Bike riding at the gym goes much faster if you have a book to read. I read Outliers, the new Malcolm Gladwell book. One of the chapters was on how long it takes to become an expert in something. The official tally is 10,000 hours... pretty incredible. I wonder if the same thing applies to running? (That is a LOT of running.) Even if you ran an average of 6mph that would be 60,000 miles logged!

Today we are going to do about another 30 minutes before beginning the book plan tomorrow. I think with all the holiday parties and such this week, I will try to keep an eye on my eating habits, but won't get too serious about it until vacation ends on the 5th.

So 2 days down... 6 months and 28 days left!

And so the training commences!

Today is the first day of official marathon training. We had a great holidays, from Cali to Texas. The last three days we have eaten beef... lots of meat and salad. Now it is back on Track. We are somewhat going to follow a training program in a book by Jeff Galloway. He is the runner who says to run-walk-run-walk, but neither T or I am a fan of that method. Instead, we will follow most of his general XT /run mileage program, but actually run all of the runs. The program in the book starts with XT on Monday, so today T and I are going to run 30 minutes, then XT tomorrow, and run 30 minutes again on Sunday. After that we will start to follow the written plan moreso.

T has decided he wants to follow the training plan to run a 3:30 (~8min/mi) pace. I personally will be excited if (1) I run the whole time (2) I can do a 10 minute pace. Right now, both of those are lofty goals, but I'm all for pushing myself within reason. ;-)

In other running news, T's little brother is going to run it with us. He signeed up yesterday. Now I just need to get my brother on board, although he could "school us all" as he says.

Here's to a first official training run!!!

Off to Cali!

Nothing training related to post today... we are off to Cali this evening! Not even going to bring running clothes given the crazy schedule we have planned. I'm sure we'll walk about the city enough anyways. After that it's off to Houston, then official training begins!!! We still need to get a general training plan though. I like some of the ones you can create on Runners World. Have a great holidays!

Goal Accomplished

So I just ran the quick mile... and the puppydog and I ran not jogged. (I'm thinking in the 8-8:30 range, which is pretty good for me.) Yay! I can honestly say if I didn't have to come post whether or not I ran, I probably would have skipped it. Hurray for accountability :-P Now time to shower and get ready for our date!
-L

Today's Goal

Today's Goal: Run the puppydog on the quick 1 mile loop around the house before my date with T. I shouldn't have any excuse since it takes less than 10 minutes, and I'll want to shower before our date anyways!

And so the Challenge begins!

Sunday night, T and I signed up for the San Francisco FULL marathon this summer. The race is on July 26, 2009. CRAZY. I have run the SF Half twice, and an Austin half once, and T runs around the lake a lot. We are both going to have to train... which I've never really done in the past.

We leave for the holidays on Thursday, so official training shall commence December 26, 2008. That gives us exactly 7 months to train. We will use the next week and a bit to figure out how we are going to train. Given our personalities, I don't think we will have a crazy strict schedule, or a rigid meal plan, but we are going to try to train in some systematic way. T goes to the gym nearly daily, and I make it about 2-4 times a week. (That will need to be upped!) Sadly, we belong to different gyms.

One of the biggest challenges is going to be scheduling. We only have so much time together, usually later in the evenings, and the social calendar tends to fill up. I tend to make references to "as soon as things aren't so busy" at which point T reminds me "things are always busy".

So this blog is to keep me accountable... comments, suggestions, training tips are more than welcomed!