Or Why We Don’t Run in Winter Boots

I’m trying desperately not to fall off the wagon again by posting two weeks in a row. (I know it’s been something like 10 days since my last post but I haven’t hit the two week mark yet, so it counts.) Really though, I don’t want to fall off the blog wagon. I want to post every day. Or at least every time I run. Unfortunately, there’s about a million other things I want to do, too and also some things I have to do, and there’s only so much time in the day.

Yes, I don’t have enough to do, so I started a new knitting project! I’m calling these my Hermione legwarmers. Because they are legwarmers, and I’m using some left over yarn in Gryffindor colors from a scarf I knit a few years back.

This is how week two went running wise:

Well, week 1 and week 2, but let’s focus on week 2.

The red ones are what I’m going to call the “unauthorized rest days”. I’ll start with those. On Wednesday, I didn’t feel like going back out after driving home from work. I felt like being lazy. I baked banana bread instead of going to the gym. It was fun and delicious, and you should check out the recipe.

Then on Thursday I went out for drinks with some of my engineer friends to celebrate national engineering week. Who better to hang out with on engineering week, right? I did not go running before, but I did sort of go running after. 😉 As usual, I waited until the last possible second to leave the bar for the train. And then instead of leaving at the last possible second, I said goodbye to all my friends…and THEN I left. So, I had to run to the train station. This was not the first time I’ve had to do this (and I’m sure it won’t be the last).  It was less than a mile from the bar to the train station, but it really was a fun little sprint. I stopped to laugh at myself whenever I needed to wait to cross a street (yes, I’m sure I looked like a total crazy person, but there weren’t really any people out to witness it.)

Unfortunately, the next day I found out that my shins do not like when I run in winter boots. They actually kind of hate it, and were quite painful Friday through Sunday. It took until Tuesday for them to be completely better. Lesson Learned!

Fancy running boots: good at being boots, bad at being running shoes.

Anyways, I should probably mention the actual running I did this week. I did a Foundation Run on Monday and Saturday, Speed Play on Tuesday, and a Fast Finish run on Sunday. They were all fun, and I love running and can’t seem to get enough. I think this has something to do with the fact that with this particular training cycle I am running for MUCH shorter periods of time, so I’m always left wanting more. This sounds like it could be frustrating (and sometimes, it is a little), but I think it’s really helping to keep my excitement levels high.

Now, I know you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about with my different types of runs (although some are easy to guess), so as I write up these recap posts, I’ll try and give a little bit of detail about each type. This week, I’ll talk about Foundation Runs because those are the most prevalent types of runs in my schedule.

Effort level for Foundation runs ranges from extremely easy to comfortable. You start out at extremely easy for 5 minutes, then do easy/comfortable for the majority of the run (about 15 or 20 minutes on my schedule), and then finish up with another 5 minutes of extremely easy running. In this plan, easy is just another word for slow. So slow that I’ve had to walk a few times to keep in the right heart rate zone. Which I find incredibly annoying. But on the other hand, I really enjoy the middle chunk of these runs which is just a relaxing easy/comfortable paced run.

Another thing I should mention is that I’ve been doing the foundation runs using a hill program on the treadmill, because when I go back outside there will be hills. This only make me have to go slower, and I’d probably enjoy the runs more if I didn’t do it. But future Amy will thank me for not completely losing all ability to run up hills.

And now, my questions for you:

Do you use the hill function on the treadmill? How do you deal with excruciatingly slow running? Have you ever run through the city to catch a train, and how’d it work out for your legs?

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!