BQ Training: Week 1

The REAL week one, that is.

In the past, the first couple of weeks of training have always been kind of pansy weeks and not that different from the easy weeks I had been doing. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this first week had some meat to it. This probably due to the fact that previous training cycles were like 20+ weeks long and this time around it's only 16 weeks. Yay!

I did have to give up my two-a-days to start with and was instructed to try to run EITHER in the mornings or the nights. This was kind of an issue, as on Mondays and Wednesday mornings I like to exhaust my dog with a run and Monday and Wednesday evenings I like to run with the KoB. But, I made it work and I know that the two-a-days will likely be coming back soon, so it's a minor schedule adjustment that I can easily work around.

Also, I went out of town on Thursday, which wouldn't be a big deal except I was traveling with friends who don't run AND we stayed in Podunkville, NC where the streets were 55mph with no shoulder and windy and dangerous. I did run once while I was there, but I had to drive 30 miles roundtrip to get to the park and I only had time to run 5 miles. SHEESH. More on the trip later.

So... here's the week's main runs:
* Two workouts for the week of the same run: 9 mile runs with 3 miles in the middle at marathon pace.
*12 mile long run at about 30 minutes over Marathon Pace.

The Marathon Pace runs went well. I feel like I haven't lost that much fitness over the summer. I'm sure I've lost endurance, but I have no worries about that coming back in the upcoming weeks.

The steady state run of 12 miles was pretty tough. I think a part of that was due to the fact that I ran it all over town and it was hard to concentrate on my pace when I was stopping at red lights, etc. I ended up averaging about 9:00 pace and only made it 11.5 miles. Not the best, but hey... it's the first week. I'm cutting myself some slack.

I was supposed to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 48-50 miles for the week and only ended up with 45.

Crosstraining:
Lots of walking and some hiking.
Core exercises- twice.
Yoga- once.
Kayaking- which feels like it should count as cross-training.

All-in-all I'm pretty happy with the week. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get in all the miles that I could have... but, today starts a new week... onward and upward!