This Week's Workouts

This week I added running back in to my workout schedule, and started Jeff Galloway's 5K training plan. Last time I started a running program, I used the Couch to 5K program. I thought about doing that again, but then I looked back over my blog posts about that program, I realized that I had one major difficulty with it. It started out with time-based intervals, but then switched to distance-based intervals. Since I'm a pretty slow runner, when the transition came, the distance was quite a bit farther than I had gone during the time intervals. Ultimately, I wasn't successful with the program, and I think that's why.

So, I turned to Jeff Galloway's program. It takes a little longer (15 weeks vs. 9 weeks for C25K), but the increases seem more reasonable. Jeff also advocates a run/walk method, which I used when I trained for Disney 2009 and it worked very well for me. I should finish up at the end of April, and I found a race that sounds good on April 30.

I did all my runs with a 2 minute run/2 minute walk interval. I know when I was finishing up my Disney training, my run segments were twice as long as my walks, but I evidently did not write down exactly what I was doing.

Anyway, here's what I did this week.

Monday
Plan: 10-15 minutes running
Actual: 14:30 minutes, 1.01 miles, flat on the treadmill (plus 5 minute warm up & 5 minute cool down walks)

Tuesday
Plan: cross train
Actual: 1-hour Pilates class (beginner mat)

Wednesday
Plan: 10-15 minutes running
Actual: 14:30 minutes, 1.01 miles, flat on the treadmill (plus 5 minute warm up & 5 minute cool down walks)

Thursday
Plan: cross train
Actual: rest day (I couldn't take my usual mat class because we had a staff meeting. I was going to work out with one of our apprentice instructors instead, but she ended up not being available.)

Friday
Plan: rest day
Actual: 1-hour Belly Dancing workshop

Saturday
Plan: 1 mile run
Actual: cross train, 1.5 mile walk (among other walking)
I did a museum day with Archer & a friend of hers. The 1.5 miles was the walk from the restaurant where we ate lunch to where Archer's friend parked her car after we missed the bus and it was a 30-minute wait for the next one. We weren't walking fast, but at least we were moving. I say it counts.

Sunday
Plan: cross train
Actual: 1 mile run
Since I knew I could do a mile from my runs earlier in the week that I could do a mile fairly easily I wanted to add a little bit of a challenge to the weekend run. So, instead of doing the treadmill flat, after a 5-minute warm up walk, I put it on a random incline program. I set it for 16 minutes, thinking that I'd have to go slower than I did when I was keeping it flat. I was thrilled that I actually did the mile in 14:30, just like earlier in the week! I finished up to 16 minutes with some brisk walking, then actually did 15 minutes of cool down because I wanted to find out which house the guy chose on House Hunters International!

I'm pleased with my results for the week and hope I can keep it up!