Training Day 8 - Gym

Today marked my official start of my Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon Training Program. I'm using the plan from runDisney that was created by Jeff Galloway. I'm utilizing the "to finish in the upright position" plan. No, I didn't make that up. That is what the plan is called. Today was my first workout, a 30 minute maintenance run. Tuesday I am going to plan on using the gym at work in the morning. Right now, I'm planning on using the elliptical to do the running, so I can do a little less impact but run faster to help build my cardio. I think it will be a good plan of action for the work out following my longer weekend runs.

Elliptical

LEGEN... wait for it...

This week, I remembered at the last second that last time my music pace seemed a little slow for the gym. So I pulled off to the side of the road before entering the parking garage, opened the 105 Running Tracks CD on Amazon MP3, and selected several of the higher bpm tracks for download. I figured I could just run the CD in shuffle and it'd be good enough. I wouldn't have an all rise, baby, Barney Stinson Get Psyched mix, but it would do the trick any way. I did keep a better pace this time. I started at a pretty good pace. I was trying to go really close to a half hour and not go over, because I was in a little later. I did the towel trick again, and uncovered at around 28 minutes. I also saw that I was closing in on 4 miles, so I kicked it into high gear. I pushed really hard to make the 4 miles, and I did at 30:30. So, I was a hair over. So sue me.

I still felt good after. I know these week day runs aren't meant to push me to my limits, but it's hard early on to not want to push to a longer run. I'm trying to be good. It's like I was reading on Jeff Galloway's site, when he was talking about running a marathon, at the beginning you should run slower than you think you can and still take walk breaks. His strategy helps you to finish strong, and is supposed to help you actually improve your time over just running, if you use the right ratio in the run-walk-run strategy. It feels counter intuitive, kinda like the Monty Hall problem, but it works. Or, I'll trust him that it works. It's worked well for me so far.

The Stats

Time: 30:30 mins (workout)
Distance: 4.00 miles (workout)
Average Speed: 7.87 mph
Average Pace: 7:37 min / mile




...DARY!