1.12.15

Half Marathon Training Plan

This is my first date with one of those "let us design your training plan for your next race" things.  It's day 3 of week 1.  Of a 16 week process.

The Plan: Level III Half Marathon Training by Heart Rate. Since my Garmin 225 is my new boyfriend, I used one of the training plans off the Garmin website.  Helfpully they have plans based on both time and heart rate, so I picked the "Level III Heart Rate" plan.  It involves 8 workouts a week.  Not only is this my first date with a training plan, it's my first date with 2-per-day workouts.  Here's a peak at the first week.


Thoughts before trying: 
  • "This is totally reasonable, I can do the 2-per-day workouts when I have TRX or Zumba because I'll be at the gym anyways".  I don't think I was drunk at the time I chose this.  
  • Threshold/Hill/Tempo workouts have to be in the morning and the recovery workouts have to be in the afternoon, opposite how they are listed on this plan. 
  • This will only work in the winter.  Anything that involves working out in the afternoon in the summer will not work because the heat alone jacks up my heart rate too much.  If I like this training plan I will try the "Level 2 heart rate" plan for the summer because it involves only 5 workouts per week and no doubles.

Thoughts so far: 
  •  2-per-days only work if you get up in the morning for the first one.  And if you don't have other stuff going on in the evening.  So far, Monday's second work out got moved to Tuesday (and I actually did it) and Wednesdays second workout got moved to the one blank Thursday.  Rest days are for sissies.  
  • Recovery runs inside: Today I did the 'recovery run' on the elliptical and that worked surprisingly well.  It kept me honest about my pace and effort and was less frustrating than running on a treadmill as fast as some people walk.
  • Recovery runs outside:  I'm still terribly slow running in Zone 2, like "oh look at that snail zooming by my ass".  These runs are tolerable outside with no other runners to watch me. Better than inside with people on the track or treadmills observing my slowness and making me feel grumpy.
  • That whole "90 minutes of Z2 running" coming up this Saturday?  That's going to suck.  So far, I can really only stay in Z2 for 30-40 minutes so they'll be some walking. 

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