Hello everyone! I hope everyone made it through another Christmas season without too many bumps and bruises along the way. I, for one, am pretty glad it's all over and am ready to get back into a comfortable routine. That's sad to say, but true nonetheless. I guess when you're in the middle of a particularly bad Christmas, you don't really know it. Not until all the gifts are opened and the food is eaten and everyone goes home and the dust settles around you do you have time to reflect on it all and say "Wow, that pretty much sucked." Without going into too much detail, I will say that for a group of people who all came from the same place, I don't know how my family came to live in such different senses of reality. Hopefully someday we can all work out our differences and be able to get along, but for now we are merely tolerating each other's existence.
Anyway. Enough of that. Aside from the family drama, Christmas was nice. My dad got me some fun running books and gear and my mom got me The Sweetest, Softest Robe on Earth with footies to match. I've pretty much lived in that for the last week. My sister and her husband loved the cross stitch monster I've been working on and hung it up right away. I was just glad to have it finished and framed in time!
So now I'm starting to look ahead to what my goals will be for 2008. I want to do it all! But I find myself in sort of a lull. It's hard to get out and run and my base I had planned to work on during the time between the marathon in October and the half marathon in April has taken a nose dive. I'm lucky to get up over 15 miles a week! I think not having a training program to hold me accountable is really making it easy for me to slide. I'm considering tacking on an extra 4 weeks to my 1/2 marathon training program (16 versus 12) to get me back on track and hopefully salvage some sort of base. I've decided to switch up the training plans for the 1/2 marathon. Last year I stuck pretty much exclusively to the Hal Higdon programs and was happy with the results. Next year, however, I'm going to go with SmartCoach and see what happens. If you've had experience with this training program please drop me a note and tell me your thoughts. I'm also trying to figure out how to add in some hill training (seeing as how the lack of it pretty much killed me during the marathon) but I have no idea how to do that. Is it just as simple as running up a bunch of hills? Do I charge them as fast as I can? Or try and keep my heart rate the same? How often and how many? So many questions for such a simple idea!
The good news? I'm down 20 of the old LB's since October 21st. The fact that I've managed to lose any weight at all during Christmas is extremely encouraging. Now if I could only get out the door every once in a while...
7 comments:
Kate...
I thought I heard someone else on this boat... I know it is you because of some similar issues plaque us both.
Family... where to begin, and so I won't. Running..consistency? Where?
I have used the Smart Coach plan before and am going to use it again to train for my half in April. I too am going to do the 16 week plan plus five days as my half is not until 4-19-08.
I feel as though I am literally starting all over but I am choosing to use the Very Hard mode of the training but starting out with only 6 miles a week.
I plan on evaluating my progress somewhere along training and possibly adjusting the plan accordingly.
We both seem to be striving for the same goal in April so we will have to keep each other going.
Be strong and good luck in 2008, I will be watching you to cheer your progress along.
The older we get the more diverse and interesting our families become. There is a reason why there is 364 days between Christmas - makes us forget the 'ugh' part of Christmas.
Thanks for the note on my blog - I am in a funk too - but finally starting to break out of it. This week between holidays is a good planning week for 2008.
Hope 2008 brings you great runs!
Kate,
Many congratulations on the weight loss. That is incredible, given that the "reason for the season," for so many of us, is pigging out. (I see that you read my latest blog post, so you know where I stand on that one.)
I have not used Smartcoach, but I've heard that it's based somewhat on FIRST. I hope you do very well with it. You survived Christmas--you can do anything! :-)
Kate,
Can I relate! To ALL of it!
We can all use a little encouragement and push to get past the 'stupid' things in life that try and weigh us down. Fortunately as runners we have lots of good things to focus on and it looks like you, me and others have a 1/2 coming up in April!
You'll be in great running shape again by then and I'll be looking to see what your new PR will be!
I am completely jealous of the 20# weight loss! I'm only down 10... and I think its muscle. :(
Well, I guess 10 is something! :)
Well, I was thinking that your post sounded like me writing it (the family, the lull, even the questions about hills...) but down 20 lbs?? Holy $hit. I could only hope. Great work!!
On hills, here is advice I've been given -
Incorporate it into a regular run, run maybe a mile warm up to a hill. Then do some repeats, run up it hard, walk back down. Maybe start with 3 - 5 times(shorter distances at first also, then longer hills). Then run another mile or two. No more than once a week, take it easy at first so as not to avoid injury. Also don't add anything else (like speedwork) at the same time. Try this for a month or two before adding other types of training.
There are probably other ways and other opinions but this is what I got from blogger friends...
so as to 'avoid injury' - sorry about that!! :D
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