About a month and a half ago, I busted Paul’s chops for not having posted in a month. So, of course I didn’t post for a month and a half after that and Paul has called me out. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed. It’s been like a blink of the eye. There has been some pretty inspiring sport on TV since my last post. I watched the Tour de France in earnest and I sit in front of the TV watching the Olympics every night right now. One could argue that I’ve been a couch potato living vicariously through these elite athletes on the “boob tube”.
That wouldn’t be true at all, though. The truth is that I’ve found these sporting contests extraordinarily inspiring. I’ve spent my mornings running and I’ve been loving it. At the time of my last post, I was pulling 28 mile weeks. I’ve since moved up to 33 miles per week. I’m currently in week 3 of a 24 week half marathon training plan that I’ve put together myself from the Daniels Running Formula by Jack Daniels. This is really still a base building phase, so I’ve been putting together 6 days a week alternating 5 miles and 6 miles at my “easy pace”. I do strength training at the gym on the 5 mile days.
Next week, I’ll add the long run into my repertoire of workouts. The first one will be 9 miles at my easy pace. After three more weeks of this, I’ll move into a phase with some speedwork. Ultimately, I’ll work up to 60 miles per week and my weekly mileage will vary between 45 and 60 miles all the way up to the half marathon in January. I’m looking forward to the speedwork right now since I’ve just been cranking out miles at my easy pace for the last few months. It’s getting a little boring, but I know that once I actually start the speedwork, I’ll be happy to take a few easy runs to recover.
I really think 1 hour, 45 minutes is a realistic goal for the half marathon. I’m running a 10K in October, though so I’ll have a better idea then. I’m going to try to run a 5K in September and a 15K in November or December if I can find one. If not, I’ll try to do another 10K.
So, things are chugging along even if I haven’t been writing about it. I’ve been logging everything on my Runner’s World training log and also on a new training log I’ve been programming myself. Eventually that will integrate with a running social network I’m working on. Stay tuned for that.
I am excited to hear about your running social network. I am pretty tied in to buckeyeoutdoors.com but I wouldn’t mind another place to meet fellow runners. I know what you mean about the inspiration you get from the olympics, I saw that 38 year old win the women’s marathon and I was ready to start training for 2016. Then reality set in as I ran another two miles at 9 minute pace rather then the olympic pace she set at 5:30. Still, it gets you off your butt.