Rock & Roll Half Marathon & Marathons I am coming for you

After being sick which felt like forever I finally got back into training this week logging a lot more kilometers/miles than I have in any other week this far. I did a 15K/9.3 mile run today at an incline of 1.5 varying speeds from 6.5 to 8 miles per hour burning well more than 1000 calories. Surprisingly the run felt easy. During this week I ran 7.1 miles on Monday, 6.98 miles on Wednesday, 6.98 miles on Thursday. I cross trained Tuesday and just did the elliptical for 30 minutes.

The goal this year is to run the Rock n Roll half marathon in Seattle on June 22nd, the Edmonton Derby marathon in August 25th in my city, Rock and Roll marathon in Montreal September 22nd, and then the Rock and Rock n Roll half marathon in Las Vegas November 17 to wrap up the running year. If I feel ready and think I can get a personal best time in the Run Wild half marathon in St. Albert on May 5th I will run it but if not I will just run the 10K. I figure if I can shave 10 minutes off my time every few months I can get my time down to 1:20 to 1:34 some day for half marathon distance and between 3:05 and 3:20 for a marathon I will go to Kauai Hawaii and run their marathon one day since it is where me and Trevor got engaged and winning first place pays out $5000 which would pay for the vacation =).

I set a goal of running 1500 kilometers this year which I think might have been too ambitious but we shall see. There is still lots of time and once the snow and ice melts I'll be outside running again and not running like a hamster on a wheel on the treadmill lol.

Getting back into it

Looking back on my work out journal December and January were really lazy running months for me and Trevor. I went to the gym 4-6 times each month which is pretty sad considering during a normal week during peak training season I am either at the gym or running outdoors 4-6 times a week. I started to log my distance, time, calories burned, and heart rate in my journal again. My goal for the year is to log 1500 km mostly through running and some from biking. So far this year I have logged a total of 51 km this year so far, not counting what I have done this week. Once the snow melts and it isn't icy anymore I know we will both be running outdoors and doing our long runs on the weekend together on trails. It is time to up the running and cycling since we plan on running a marathon later this year most likely it will be the Edmonton Derby marathon and we are also planning on doing two duathlons. The Footstock Duathlon 5.8 km run followed by a 37.7 km bike, finishing with another 9.7 km run in Cochrane and the Sandy Beach Duathlon which is a 5km run, 30 km bike ride and 5 km run. It will be interesting since I ride my bicycle for leisure and to and from work in the summer and not competitively and Trevor doesn't even own a bicycle yet. With traffic is takes me about 37 minutes to ride to work which is approximately 22 km. I better get a pedaling if we register. Besides those races we will probably do a hand full of the 5 peaks races, the Rock n Roll marathon in Montreal in September and Trevor will be doing a few of the Spartan Races this year.

I have started Jeff Galloway's marathon training schedule, but in order to be ready for the marathon I have cut out weeks 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, and 21 out. Trevor will be doing the same and doing Insanity workouts on non-running days. I figured I can cut weeks out since I will just do the Magic Mile runs on a Monday of a longer run week. Also My work out week starts on a Monday and I exercise Monday to Thursday and Saturday. I will be running Monday, Wednesdays and Saturdays, or Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays with the non-running days being cross training days where I will bike or do weight training.

I use to not run on an incline I admit. I changed my treadmill running after my first half marathon. I know set the treadmill to hill work outs once a week and run on an incline of 2 on interval, farlek, tempo, or long slow steady distance runs. My fiance had the fastest times when he was running on an incline of 2 regularly last year and during training for my second marathon I had started to do so as well and shaved about 10 minutes off of my first half marathon time.