Same Time, Same Channel

Easy run.

6:03 am, 33° F, 83% humidity, winds calm.

Everyone is back in school this week and so I had to start my run earlier than Lindsay and Allie start on Mondays, so I went out by myself. In retrospect, I'm glad I went out earlier. Explanation forthcoming.

I felt really sluggish today. I did feel a little better for the second half of the run; however, it started snowing in earnest when I had about two miles to go. That's why I'm glad I started earlier. If I had started at the later time, almost all of my run would have been in the snow, instead of just a 1/3 of it.

I looked at potential training schedules for myself over the weekend. I'm currently doing whatever I want during the week and then doing Michelle's long runs with her on Saturdays. I'm thinking about running the American Discovery Trail Marathon on Labor Day. There are 12 weeks between the marathon that Michelle is training for and the ADT marathon. I've been thinking about doing the Hudson plan that I did for the Ogden Marathon a couple of years ago. It's a 20 week plan. Rather than cut it down to 12 weeks, I thought I could overlap the first 8 weeks of it with the last 8 weeks of Michelle's plan and do my plan on week days and her plan on Saturdays. However, to do that I would have to start my plan 3 weeks from now and the first week of that plan would be about 46 miles. I ran 28 miles last week, and so I'd have to ramp up to 46 over the next 3 weeks, and I've already been increasing my weekly mileage fairly significantly over the last few weeks. So I'm not sure if this is a wise plan. I think I'll look into some other alternatives and just kind of play it by ear. However, I do think it is time for me to go from running 4 days/week to 5 days/week. I've been doing 4 days/week consistently for several weeks now. So to that I end, I plan to run an easy 3 tomorrow.

AP: 10:20. Splits: 10:30, 10:32, 10:47, 10:06, 10:25, 9:54, 0.61 @ 9:56.

Easy run.

5:42 am, 29° F, 79% humidity, wind 3 NW.

I managed to carry out my plan this morning of running 3 miles before driving to seminary. After the drive to seminary, I did the shred. Then I spent a good chunk of time struggling to assemble a miniature green house that my daughter got in a Scholastic book order yesterday. I finally gave up with that. Now I've got to get ready for work.

AP: 10:15. Splits: 10:39, 10:20, 9:46.

Easy run.

6:08 am, 33° F, 53% humidity, winds calm.

I confirmed my suspicion about why I can't run as fast as I used to. I stepped on the scale last night. I knew I had gained weight, but I didn't realize how much. I've gained 25-30 pounds since I ran the Newport Marathon last June. I really need to get serious about weight loss again. I tried keeping a food journal last Monday, but I only made it through lunch and then I felt apart in the afternoon and evening. That's typical for me. I do pretty well in the morning. The problem comes later in the day. But maybe my publicly declaring my failures here on the blog will help me to be more disciplined and accountable. I've got consistent running going again now. I've got to focus on my diet now.

In the good news department, I ran the same route today that I ran on Monday and I was just a little bit faster today.

AP: 10:07. Splits: 10:18, 10:05, 10:28, 10:02, 10:19, 9:50, 0.63 @ 9:43.

Easy run.

9:26 am, 54-57° F, 38% humidity, wind 20 WNW.

I didn't have time to run early this morning because I had to cook a birthday breakfast for my husband, drive my son to seminary, and be on a conference call for work from 8:00 to 9:00 (during which time I had to drive my daughter to school). So after everyone was off to school and my conference call was over, I got dressed and headed out for my run.

It is rarely very windy when I run early in the morning. The wind doesn't get going until it warms up. So today I got to run in the wind. It's not the East Central Illinois wind that Tracy has to deal with, but it was much more wind than I'm used to.

I ate better yesterday and I wrote down everything that I ate. But it was quite a struggle and I was hungry a lot. But maybe that's because I probably didn't eat quite enough. I think I was around 1000 calories for the day. I probably should eat a little more than that, but not too much more. Getting enough calories shouldn't be a problem today. It's my husband's birthday, and so we'll be going out to dinner, probably to a Mexican restaurant. I will try not to eat any chips.

AP: 10:06. Splits: 10:25, 10:13, 10:06, 9:55, 10:07, 0.50 @ 9:37.

We did in fact go out to a Mexican restaurant last night. I completely avoided the chips and salsa. I had just one taco, about 1/3 of my refried beans (and the one chip that was stuck in them), and about two bites of my daughter's grilled chicken. I had water to drink. I figure I got out of that restaurant with under 500 calories for the meal.

I did the shred this morning. I figure one more week at level 1 and then I'll move up to level 2. I'm managing to do the shred only twice/week. I think I should do 3 times/week, but it's going to be hard enough to keep the twice/week going let alone move up to 3 times/week while I'm increasing mileage, mostly because of the increased time spent running.

 No foolin' here, but happy April Fools' Day to everyone.

Long Run

7:21 am, 55-63° F, 16% humidity, wind 8 SW.

It was almost like old times. We ran on the Highline Canal Trail and we had 4 people to start out: Allie, Michelle, Michelle, and me. But Allie had to be home before the rest of us, so she turned around about 10 minutes before we did and went back on her own. It was the three of us after that.

The trail was much more crowded from the start today than it was last Saturday. That's probably on account of the significantly warmer weather. I saw a guy from my office near the beginning. I'll have to talk to him about it on Monday.

I struggled with this run, particularly the last bit. I wanted to do 11.26 to round off my weekly mileage to 33, and we discussed doing an extra .26 on the trail, but I opted to stop after 11. I maybe would have gone on and done the .26 then if I hadn't been so desperately thirsty. It was rather a warm day and I hadn't carried any water with me. I think I need to start carrying water on my long runs. So I did the .26 when I got home. My Sam went with me and he complained the whole time about how slow I am. He's absolutely right.

I don't know about this increasing mileage so rapidly. It is really hard for me. I maybe think I should back off a bit and increase more slowly and focus more on eating right and losing weight. Getting this extra weight off will help me get faster.

AP for the 11 miles on the trail: 10:00. Splits: 10:00, 9:47, 9:41, 9;45, 9:51, 9:56, 10:07, 10:11, 10:08, 10:23, 10:06.

AP for the .26 I did when I got home: 10:22.