I Ran With A Plan - Week One

I'm actually training when I have a plan. I still feel sufficiently clueless about training that I just plain love it if I have someone who allegedly knows what they are doing telling me how far to go and how fast and when. Especially when I'm training for anything longer than a 10K. Granted, my ability to pace myself (or rather, to estimate my own speed at any given time) is pathetic, so I practically need a treadmill or a speedometer to hit a pace reliably, but that's a whole other post.

So I downloaded the SmartCoach app for my iPhone. It's from Runner's World, a publication that allegedly knows some stuff about running and has never really struck me as too "out there" when it comes to telling you nonsense like "triple your speed while sitting on the couch!" or similar. Their advice tends to be the far more sensible "Run Your Butt Off! Lose weight by... well, running your butt off..." variety.

The app is pretty simple, in that you plug in a recent race time and distance, goal distance, pick a target training intensity, weekly mileage and training plan length, and the number-crunching pixies in your phone tell you how far to go and how fast and when. 

I wanted to finish up the Dash For Life 5K first and use that as my starting point for the training plan. I was really hoping to best my 5K race PR of 28:31, but it was hot, humid, muggy and so on. When the sun came out, you could quite literally feel the steam coming up off of the damp road, so I opted to not run until I hurled. I still finished in a pretty respectable 29:06, just out of placing in my very competitive age group.

I plugged in 29 minutes even for my 5K time, half-marathon goal distance (obviously), 21 - 25 miles weekly mileage, Very Hard training level, 12 weeks and picked Friday as my long run day. Combining that and a bit of cross-training of my choice, my dream target for the week was as follows:

Date	Target	Pullups	Plyometric Jump Squats	Avg HR
8/12/2013	5 mile tempo run, 1 mile warm, 3 @ 10:10, 1 mile cool
8/13/2013	4 mile easy run, 11:48 pace	24 @ 45	5 sets of 15	159
8/14/2013	Rowing
8/15/2013	Rest Day
8/16/2013	8 Mile long run, 11:48 pace

Monday's tempo run  was pretty close, though mile 2 might have been a smidgen slow at 10:30. Tuesday's 4 mile easy run was dead on within a few seconds, because it was on the treadmill. I rowed 4446 meters in about 30:10. Thursday was my day off, and Friday's long run was glorious. The weather was perfect, not too not, not too cold, but I was a bit rushed due to oversleeping. So I shaved about 5 minutes off the recommended pace. Next week should be better and  hopefully, I won't spend as many late afternoons trying to escape the gravitational pull of the office long after I meant to leave.

Also, hopefully next week will produce less "ho-my-goodness plyometric jump squats are making me walk like a cowgirl!" as well.