Wrapping up 2008

Well 2008 has come to an end, but my 2009 goal has not changed.  I just printed up a 12 week training schedule for half marathons.  I used the one from RunnersWorld.com

 which I know is kinda generic, but it's good enough for me.  

I got a Garmin Forerunner for Christmas, which is good and bad.  It's good, because it's a little more accurate than Nike+, and bad because now I know how slow I really am.  Actually, I'm only a little slower than Nike+ was telling me, which is good because I thought there would have been a larger difference.  My average pace is now around a 9 minute mile as opposed to 11 min/mile back in May.

Monday Jan 5th officially starts my training routine.  In the mean time, I've run 5K every day for the past 5 days.  In addition (though I'm a little embarrassed) I started using the Wii Fit for Yoga.  My hope is that it will help me with my running form and "running tall".

Happy New Year!

Two 5K's later

So apparently, it's been a while since I've posted anything.  Since my last post, I have run the Bergenfield 5K back in November and the AMBS 5K Reindeer Run yesterday on Dec 6th.  After a poor showing in November, I decided I needed to start training a little more seriously.  Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of the cold weather, but so far I've still motivated myself to get out on a fairly regular basis.  I just started buying cold weather gear, and asked for more for Christmas.  The good news is that I've been out on long runs every Sunday (except today) and have been finished 6-7 miles without a problem.  I think I'm going to try 8 this weekend and 10 the following.  

So the end result was a better time than I posted in November, and I was able attack the hills better than ever before.  But, I didn't beat my "goal" time by a minute or so.  I think I need to do more speed work and keep increasing my long runs.  

My next 5K will be January 1st in FairLawn, so we'll see how that goes.