weekly wrap-up and Training Schedule

First of all, Sunday Zach and I went for a little hike- about 40 minutes and then went swimming for 30 minutes. I did so well!! And by that I mean I made it from one end of the pool to the other actually SWIMMING. Ok, a few times I took in some extra water and had to cough and thrash just a little. But I was nearly to the end of the pool the few times that happened. Most of the time I made it without incident. I did 15 laps total, 5 kicking-only (as warm up and cool down) and 10 swimming! I couldn't believe how much I improved over last week's near-drowning. I love it. :)

Last week I ran a TOTAL of 17.5 miles. I did 1 hour 25 minutes total Cross Training: I swam twice for a total of 40 minutes & did 45 minutes on the elliptical. I did upper body weights with Zach twice and legs/abs once, plus that weird aerobics class. :D

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I am officially starting training for the Boston Marathon today! My training schedule is like this:

-4 days of running per week: 1 easy run, 1 Intervals or Tempo run, 1 longer General Aerobic or Marathon Pace run, and 1 long run. This is roughly based on the FIRST program, but I am adding one day of running and switching the workouts up a little. Still lots of speed work, but slightly less due to the small increase in overall mileage.

-1-2 days of cross training a week. I'll do elliptical and hopefully lots of swimming!

-Weight lifting: 2 days upper body, 2 days lower body, core is included in most of those sessions.

-Long Run progression will (hopefully) go like this: 10,12,14,16,14,16,18,14,10,race. I'm building up to 18 only, but that's not a final decision at this point. I might revise this depending on how I feel.

-Paces are not that important. Obviously in a speed session I'll be running fast but I'm not hung up on a certain number. I'm sure I've lost some fitness so I'm just going to do my best. Marathon Pace is far from being determined at this point, so the MP runs will be like 8:30-9:00 pace or something. Tempo will hopefully be sub-8:00 but we'll see. Easy and Long runs are whatever feels comfortable.

-I am going to be very cautious and if something hurts I will back off. But I'm not going to let the fear of injury hold me back.

I am going to count down the weeks, so this is WEEK 10. And we're off!