Training Schedule Week 1 Kickoff

I spent many hours last night putting together a training schedule to take me through the next several months of training and racing. As it's still so early postpartum in my running recovery, it will be interesting to find out if it's too aggressive and has to be adjusted.  The nice thing is that experience has taught me to avoid injury by remembering that training schedules are NOT set in stone.

I had a big blister from yesterday's long run but knew a run needed to happen per this new training schedule. So after consulting twitterverse because I've only had a handful of blisters in 5 years of running, I drained the blister, put a cushioned gel blister pad on it, and hit the road.

Note that when I will talk about a week of this training plan, I won't state certain workouts for certain days. In keeping with the fluidity, I just state seven days of workouts/rest that kick off with Monday.  Based on weather (now that I have a treadmill at home) and how I feel mentally and physically, I can move around the workouts in a week within reason. Within reason means it's probably silly to put my tempo run the day after my long run the day after speedwork. Anyway, I'm sure at some point I'll have a whole blog post on this treatment of training schedules, so I'll just move on.

This week:

• 3 mile easy
• 7 x 400m at 9:45 min/mi pace
• 3 mile easy
• 45 minute tempo run (goal 10:30 min/mi for tempo interval)
• Rest
• 3 mile at 10:45 min/mi
• 90 minute long run

So tonight was speedwork I decided.  7 x 400m at 9:45 min/mi pace. This was the first time I used interval workouts on the Garmin. Have to get used to the warning beeps before the next interval. :-) But pretty cool functionality. :-)

2.65 miles total. Splits on each 400m: 9:56, 9:44, 9:58, 9:39, 9:50, 10:02, 9:40. Averages to a 9:50. Not bad, will work on consistency as my body gets comfortable to what each pace feels like.

In a week or so, I'll outline my full training schedule and some of the goals. But I want to first see how this week goes so I can tweak as needed before publishing.

Happy Running!