Friday, December 21, 2007

Plugging along

I finally stuck to my training plan this week! 4 weeks into the program, and it's the first time I was able (willing) to do all three of the Tues/Wed/Thurs runs that I had scheduled for myself. Thursday's 8 miles felt great. I really believe that this program of running 4-5 times a week, varying the types of runs from easy, tempo, speed, and long, is really the right one for me. We'll see whether that still holds true come the marathon.

I didn't bring any water with me on my 16 miler last weekend and that turned out to be a mistake. The first 13 miles were great, but the last three got progressively worse as my thirst became stronger and stronger. I even tried stopping in a couple of coffee shops on my route to see if they had water fountains, but no luck. The counters were swamped with Saturday morning coffee drinkers and I didn't want to stand in line to ask for water, so I kept going. It was such a relief when I finally came to the fountains in the park, but that was at the end of the run, and my pace was really suffering by that time.

Otherwise, my runs feel great. I'm not doing my strength training as much as I should (as in I'm not doing them at all), but I am stretching more.

I have four out-of-town trips coming up now through January. Next week in Chicago is going to be especially rough.

1 comment:

Anne said...

Chicago's a great place to run (very very flat) provided the temps cooperate. By the way, the reduction of water fountains in public places is one of the great travesties of today. I'm impressed you went so long...you must have hydrated beforehand very well.