Monday, July 13, 2015

Running

Last week, amidst a conversation about running that included looking at what the Nike+ Running app offered in the way of coaching, I clicked *begin* on a 12 week, half marathon training plan, setting it to start today.

To add a bit of context, I've been running fairly regularly since September of 2011. The Nike+ app says I've covered 938.3 miles since then. Since moving to Georgia in 2012, we have added trail running to our repertoire. Every year we run about eight trail races, three or four local 5K's, the Peachtree 10K in Atlanta and last year we added the Atlanta Track Club 10 Miler (October) and Half Marathon (Thanksgiving) to our list of completed competitive runs. In May this year we ran a 13.1 mile trail run.

So, I'm not exactly a neophyte and my running has definitely improved since I first started, but I often have to do more of a combination of fast walking and slow running, especially on longer or very hilly runs. I'd like to be able to be more consistent and a bit faster in my pace. Hence the attempt at following a training program. I'm also hoping to look into heart rate training to see if I can incorporate that into the program as well. (But I need to spend a bit of time researching and figuring out what my target heart rate should be and how to actually maintain a certain heart rate if I'm going to do that.)

Day One:

Hoped to get to the Greenway early to beat the July heat, ha, ha. Got there by 10AM. Fortunately the Greenway is relatively shaded, but it was pretty warm. I was glad to have water. I also took along some homemade running gel to give myself a bit of fuel since I didn't eat much breakfast.

First day was to be an easy three mile run. So, I did a very slow, easy run. I tried to keep my heart rate in the 150 range as an experiment and was not able to do that while running. It stayed in the low to mid 160's fairly easily though. It'll be interesting to see what my optimum heart rate should be. I'm not sure how compatible the Nike+ training will be with the idea of doing heart rate training. In any case, I was able to do the three mile run with no problems.

Big Creek Greenway


Tomorrow I get to do Fartleks. Oh boy!




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