Hey there!

I know my posting has been a little infrequent lately, but don’t worry, I’m still here! I’ve just been busy with work, studying, and commuting. And, then I spend most of my internet time reading other people’s blogs rather than writing in my own. 😉

The big news over here is that I FINALLY started my 80/20 training plan! First, I read the book during my self imposed 3 week break from running, and then I took some time to slowly get back into running while looking for a goal race to stick at the end of this training plan. Unfortunately, mid-March isn’t race central around here so I ended up with a goal race in April which pushed back the start date of my training plan.

I spent the time setting up my heart rate zones and corresponding pace levels, and making an excessively complex (but awesome) spreadsheet about the whole thing. The spreadsheet is still a work in progress, but some day it’s going to be super cool. All of this prep work was probably a lot more effort than required, but I was in a weird sort of training plan limbo and needed something to motivate me. Manufacturing all of these set-up “requirements” did the trick, and I’m more excited than ever to finally be actually following the training plan.

Which looks like this:

Neat, isn’t it? I color-coded all the runs.  And in the spreadsheet if you click on a run it takes you to a little description of what the run actually is.  This part is still in the works, but is completed for the week I am on. It was too much to put every single thing in the spreadsheet all at once.

So, anyways…I settled on the level 1 5k plan in the book.  The description says it’s good for beginners and runners who for whatever reason want to have a lower training volume. I’m in that second group…and my reason for wanting lower training volume is what I mentioned before about work, studying, and commuting taking up all of my time.  After I complete this cycle, I’d like to move up to level 2; I will hopefully have passed my exam in March and will be spending less time studying and more time running.  (Fingers crossed!)

As you’ll notice from the picture above, I have crossed off ALL the workouts for week one. This is because I actually completed every single workout for the entire week! This is unheard of….I’m sure I”ll be receiving my Nobel prize for consistency in 20 minute workouts any day now. Feel free to praise me!

It was fun and exciting trying out some new workouts and it was definitely interesting doing heart rate training for the first time. I’ll have to give you some more details on all of that in another post because for now, it’s time to get ready for bed. Gotta start the week off on the right foot!