Hello sore muscles

Monday and Wednesday of this week were my 5k/3.11 mile days and I can really tell that the time I took off in December and January took a toll on my speed as it took 26 minutes and 57 seconds on Monday and 26 minutes 39 seconds on Wednesday to run 5k. I've been running on an incline of 2 at 6-8 mph and warming up at 5mph. I can tell I am not as strong as before we ran the Rock n Roll half marathon in Las Vegas since I got tired around 3.5k each of the days. Saturday will be my 10k run so we'll see how I will fair. I cross trained on Tuesday and I am still feeling sore in my inner thighs, back and biceps from weight lifting. I also did a magic mile just to see where I am at and it is 8:17 which is disappointing, but I am getting back into it and hopefully will be ready to run the Edmonton Derby marathon by August in under 4 hours.

Trevor did an insanity work out with his coworker this morning. I am not going to get into insanity since I need to focus on running and cycling endurance for the duathlons and the marathon.

I admit I am afraid to do the duathlon because I am not sure if I'd be able to do the cycling portion in a decent amount of time as the cut off is 2 hours 45 minutes for one of them so I am hesitant to register unless I know I can do all of that cycling and so far only one out of four of us that are supposed to be doing the duathlons have registered lol. If we don't get our butts into gear and start being hardcore about cycling it probably won't happen.

I have cut out red meat from my diet and have been eating chicken, sole, tilapia, cod and salmon and try to have 2-4 servings of fruits/vegetables with each meal. I still eat oatmeal and brown rice as we still like gariny carbohydrates. My protein comes from non-animal sources for breakfast and lunch and for dinner after I run/work out I will have chicken or fish with vegetables.

Tomorrow is Valentine's day so I shall be having a rest day and same with Friday, but I will make up for it on Sunday with a cross training day and a 10k run on Saturday.

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.