A New Plan – Including a Race!

OK, today I need to get focused back on my training, my workouts and my diet. I have been floundering on the workouts and I think part of it is the lack of training plan and/or race to run so I’ve decided on a race. OK, I’m not “officially” registered for it yet, but I’m 99% sure I’m going to register for it in the next few days and will run the City of Lakes 25K this year. It is near home, it’s a nice, fairly easy course, 2 hills and you run the course 2 times so technically 4 up hills, but you also get decent down hills on both of them. I’ve actually run ¼ of the course in a race already, the 5K I did on St. Patrick’s Day was on Lake Harriet, half of the course. The course is 2 laps around Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun, finishing at the Lake Harriet Bandshell. This course is part of the original City of Lakes Marathon, which was replaced with the Twin Cities Marathon (City of Lakes was just around the lakes and is the course that Dean Karnazes used for his 50/50/50 last fall). They wanted to keep a remnant of that race so created this 25K to be run at a time of year people are gearing up and could use it as part of a training run for fall marathons. Another plus to this race, instead of the typical cotton T-shirt, racers receive a 14 oz beer stein. I like the thought of that, too bad the race is on a Sunday as I probably won’t want to fill it all that much after the race, unlike how I would’ve if it was on a Sunday.

I actually put together a training schedule for the race already as well. With the help of the Smart Coach at Runner’s World and a little adjustment to create a bit more mileage and a few longer runs, and an adjustment on times that were provided to me, I think the schedule looks good and doable. The race is 4 weeks from this coming Sunday, but considering, other than last week, my running has been there, at least mileagewise, I should be fine. Other than the week of vacation I had in April (11 miles) and last weeks pure laziness (6 miles), my lowest week this year was 28 miles and my highest week was 50 miles (back in May) averaging 37 miles a week for this year. It’s been 2 ½ weeks since I’ve run a “long run” but that was a 17 miler and it was at a decent pace.

Now, beyond the running and getting that back on course, I need to get my eating back on track. I’ve been so bad on that lately too and I hate that. I’ve gained about 4.5 pounds when I was within 4 pounds of my goal weight, so now I’m 8.5 pounds above what I’d most like to be at and I’ve been just horrible when it comes to eating. So it’s time to make some dietary changes, getting back to what I was doing, less snacking, eating better, eating less…baby steps on that, a new change each week is probably how I’m going to have to do it. There is just too much junk going into my body and I know that has to partly be causing the problems in lack of energy that I sometimes encounter on my running…time to get back to http://www.fitday.com/ and start keeping track of everything I eat and slowly cut back on the calories and pay more attention to what I’m eating.

Finally, I need more cross-training. I’m doing zero on the strength training and zero on “real” yoga (I do some yoga moves to stretch after a run, but that’s very little), so here goes, goals for next week:

August 13 – August 19, Monday – Sunday

1. Food – keep an accurate accounting of all eating for at least 6 days of the week on http://www.fitday.com/
2. Exercise – Besides the running schedule, back to yoga, at least one session of Rodney Yee’s Strength session

Doesn’t seem like much, but baby steps to get back on track…