Week 1 Training Update

Before I give you an update on my training for the one-mile challenge, I think I should post a disclaimer so that I don't needlessly plagiarize. I was inspired to do this challenge by a man named Adam Campbell. Apparently he writes for the magazine "Men's Health." I can't recommend the magazine, but I found his blog on the internet and he was working on doing this one-mile challenge. He was giving daily updates, and got to day 100 and something, and then he just stopped writing about it. I think he just gave up. That was uninspiring, but I have to credit him with my original inspiration. I also need to credit him with the workouts I am currently doing, as I found them on his blog. They were planned for him by a coach that he had. Here is a link to his blog if you want to check it out: thefitnessinsider.menshealth.com/2006/09/the_onemile_cha_6.html

The schedule consists of four workouts that I will use in some kind of random order, probably depending on how I'm feeling and how much time I have in any given day. I may also do an occasional longer run because it's relaxing and I love it. The workouts are as follows:

Workout 1: 200 repeats. I did this last Friday. The idea is to run 200 meter repeats at just under 5:00 mile pace (34-36 seconds) and then rest for about 30 seconds between each. I do this until my performance drops off by 10%, or about 4 seconds. At that point I am done. The goal is to be able to do 8 of these before I have to stop. Since I was able to do this already on Friday, I am going to change it up a little bit. I will drop my rest time to about 24 seconds and do one set of 4 200's, with a 5 minute rest period. Then I will do my second set with the same 24 second rest period until I can't do anymore.

Workout 2: 3 mile run. This is considered a long, slow distance day, and the goal is to run each mile at 80 percent of my best mile time. You can get that number by converting your mile time to seconds (so if you run a 7-minute mile, it's 420 seconds), and then dividing that by .80 (525 seconds),and then converting it back to minutes and seconds (8:45 pace). For me, my best recent mile time as of right now is 5:50, so my pace for this workout would be about a 7:20 mile. I'm pretty confident I can do that, so I might move it down to a 7:00 pace.

Workout 3: 400 repeats. Here, the plan is to "sprint" 400 meters, and then rest 3 times the duration of the sprint. The goal is to be able to run 4 of them at a 5:00 mile pace, or about 1:15. I'm pretty sure I can do this, but we'll see. I have yet to do this workout. I may adapt this to an 800 meter repeat workout as well.

Workout 4: 2 mile run. This is similar to the 3-mile run, only faster. The goal is to run these at 90 percent of my best mile effort,or about 6:30 per mile.

So I'm off to a slow start with my training. I'm trying to make up for it, though. I ran a 200 repeat workout last Friday, and was able to do 8 200's at about 35 seconds apiece with about a 5 minute rest time after the first four. I was sucking wind pretty bad after the last one, though, so I'm going to continue with this workout until it gets a little easier, then I may modify it.

Yesterday I ran 2 miles at about a 6:45 pace, and then today I ran another two miler with Julie at the indoor track on campus at about a 6:28 pace. It felt really good. I'm excited to see how fast I can do three miles. We'll see. I'm hoping to be able to run tomorrow, but I have a business law test that I have to take tomorrow afternoon. We'll see if I'm able to find time. Here is a picture of me on the last quarter-mile of my marathon. Yeah, I look like I'm about to collapse.....because I was about to collapse. But to prove I actually finished, I included a picture of me and Julie after the race.