Training Programs

I ran 3 miles at the park last night. I've been doing 3 miles quite a bit lately when I run, so there's nothing particularly special about that distance last night. However, I've been trying to see some sort of improvement as I go along, so for a lot of my runs I try to have some sort of goal to better my previous efforts. Last night I ran the 3 miles in 32 minutes which averages out to 10:40/mile. I've been averaging a bit over 11:30/mile on runs of that distance, so I beat that average time by almost a minute! That improvement was from a combination of keeping the walking breaks short and picking up my pace.

On my last couple of runs my first lap has been my slowest pace-wise. I took almost 11 minutes for my first lap last night, which would make my average for the last two laps about 10:30 each, and I felt like I ran the last lap the fastest. While 3 miles is a long way from 13, I'm encouraged that I can run 3 miles and speed up a bit with each mile.

As Curtis wrote in his Training Hard post, it's not hard to find marathon training programs/schedules online or in the many running magazines out there. Since my whole approach to this challenge has been kind of spontaneous and haphazard I haven't actually taken up any sort of "formal" training program. That being said, I have read up a bit on them. I've gathered that many of them call for regular, fairly short runs on weekdays and a long run on the weekend with a rest day following the long run.

I have pushed my average runs up from 2 to 3 miles to 3 to 4 miles (usually), and feel pretty confident I could go 6 or 7 miles without too much trouble but 13 miles is still a ways from that. I do think I need to start trying to put in a longer run on the weekend--right now probably try for 5 or 6 miles then work my way up from there.

I guess I'm rambling a bit so I probably ought to wind this up. Here are a couple of last notes before I end this post. First, the Lost episode was excellent this week, well-worth skipping a run for! And I notice that Sue has signed on to the blog. Now she just needs to start posting!

And we're still waiting for Thais and Ross to sign on here...