Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Half Marathon Training Week 1: 2/2/2

After a long but absolutely wonderful trip abroad (went to Japan for 8 days and Shanghai for 5), I came back with a stronger resolution to: 1) keep running, 2) lose weight/ become more fit, 3) run a half marathon this year, 4) try to run a marathon at the end of the year and 5) learn Japanese.

The last one has nothing to do with the theme of this blog but I'm a firm believer of knowing the language of the country you visit.  Obviously it's not possible (and probably not very necessary) if you speak English and visit a bunch of European countries in one trip, but although I speak English and Chinese and can understand most of what I was seeing and doing while in Japan, I felt utterly useless and often frustrated because I couldn't communicate with the people there.  And that's changing now, I'm slowing building my vocal and grammar skills using an app called Memrise, and since there is no time pressure, I figured that as long as I use it everyday to review what I have learned and keep learning a few new things a day I'm in good shape.

I just hope that running and exercise can be as easy.  I do feel a time pressure on this one, since my coworker and I decided to run the 25K event at the Pineland Trail Festival at the end of May, and although it seems so far away from this cold January, it's only about 16 weeks away.  And although I'm determined and excited to do this, I'm honestly uncertain of my physical ability to tackle this >half marathon event.

And 16 weeks is the longest training plan time I could find too.  I like this plan because it doesn't make you run for two days in a row, as opposed to the shorter plans.  I found early on that I need at least a full day's rest after every run since I tend to over do things.  As in, if I go for a run it has to be a long one since I've already invested my commitment and energy to go.  And I often found myself tired out or injured when I do that.  The non-running days are either filled with your-choice cross training slots or rest days, and I plan to fill those with either yoga classes or core work.  I found a series of 9 core exercises that promised a set of nice abs if you do it 4x a week for at least a month.  I don't think I can commit 4x/week to it, nor can I do the suggested number of rep, and I have too much fat protecting my abs so I won't be seeing a 6-pack in a month.  But I know that core muscles are important for running and I also know that if I keep at it for long enough it will pay off.

So Monday I did my core exercise since there was no new episode of Castle and I went running on Sunday.  The site where I found these exercises suggest 3-5x of 12-15 reps per move, but I decided to take it slow and only do 2x10 reps for each, just to see how it feels.  I'm still feeling it today, 2 days after my exercises.  I guess taking it slow was a good idea since I haven't had the thought to quit yet.

Yesterday I went for my first 2-miler.  That's the first week of the training plan: 2:2:2 miles.  Easy right?  It's gets longer later on but the short runs don't get too bad.  I hope by the time I have to do 7-12 mile long runs it would be warm enough to do them outside since I can't imagine the boredom of doing that on the treadmill.  But the 2 miler went okay, and I was proud that I did go since I had a serious issue of laziness last night, and the weather didn't really help either.

So so far so good, I really hope I can complete this 25K with ease and lack of injury.