I wanted to run , yet it seemed it would never happen. I got to the fitness center at 6:45 and the doors were locked. Apparently they think they should be closed when it snows. I'm not sure of the logic behind that. Seems to me that would be the prime time to be open. Whatever. So I didn't run in the morning, but hoped they would be open in the afternoon. Nope. I walked up after work and again, doors locked and a sign indicating they had closed at 1PM. So, home I went, hoping it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience for me to try to get a run in on the home treadmill before supper.
I still loathe our treadmill, but last nights run was much better than the last time I used it. I was determined to push myself. I decided I would limit my run to 30 minutes since supper was practically ready and the family was waiting on me to eat. Since I was cutting 6 minutes off my total run I decided to make it a real workout. I started out at a fairly normal pace for the first 3 minutes, then ran at a significantly faster pace for 3 minutes. I had a thought at this point in my run, and came up with a plan to increase my speed. I'll get to that later. I varied my pace like this for the remainder of the run. And ended up completely wiped out. It felt good to push myself. Afterwards, I felt a little tightness in my left IT band, and it continued all night. I'm going to return to a 3 times a day stretching routine to keep it from tightening up on me. It appears as though it's going to be a recurring problem. I'll just need to stay on top of it to keep it from sidelining me.
My new plan: If C25K can get me from the couch to running 30 minutes, why can't I apply the same principles to running faster. So, now I have a plan. I'm going to rework the C25K program to increase my speed. For instance, on day 1 instead of 60 seconds jogging 90 seconds walking I'll do 60 seconds of running fast and 90 seconds of jogging. C25K only calls for a total of 20 minutes for each of the days in week 1, but I would probably increase that to somewhere between 30 and 40 since I've already been doing in excess of 30 minutes regularly. My hope is to work myself up to consistent 10:30 miles, so the jogging portion will be slower than that, probably somewhere around a 12 minute mile pace and then the running portion would be at the 10:30 pace. Hopefully this is a realistic goal. I'm already running low to mid 11's fairly regularly. The plan is to try it for a couple of weeks and if I decide that pace is too fast or too slow (ha!), I'll change it up from there. Theoretically, by week 9 I should be running a full 35 minutes or so at the faster pace.
Today's stats: I ended up doing a treadmill 2.5 miles in 30 minutes. That's a 12 minute/mile pace.
Next up: I'm hoping for a regular schedule next week. I really need to get back to the pool. I'm hoping for a run on Saturday, to run on Monday, swim on Tuesday, run Wednesday, swim Thursday, then take Friday off.
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