Inspiration Board and Marathon Training Plans

One of the things on my 32 in 32 list was to create an inspiration board to put above my treadmill. Over the spring and early summer I had saved a number of magazine clippings and issues of Runner's World to use in making it. However, I ended up jettisoning them in the weeks leading up to our move to Anchorage. A few weeks ago I restarted gathering images and this past week finally had enough clippings from magazines - mainly Runner's World but also some Yoga Journal to create a collage of sorts on a pinboard.

Last night I hung the board up above my treadmill along with my two most meaningful medals from races. The medal on the left is from my first marathon, which I also ran to raise money as part of Team in Training, and the medal on the right is from the race where I ran my fastest half-marathon.

I'll probably be looking at this board a lot over the next few months as marathon training with a half-marathon in the mix for some more current race experience thrown in kicks off on Monday. Because I haven't run a full for a couple of years and because of where my conditioning is currently at I chose a Beginning Marathon Program in The Runner's World Big Book of Marathon and Half-Marathon Training and made just a few tweaks to it. This plan calls for running 4 days a week most weeks and gives me the flexibility to attend a yoga class each week as well as the Belly Dance class that I am signed up to take later this month and next. Since several of you have asked about training, I'm sharing my plan here.

Week	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun	Total
1	3 mi	Yoga	Rest	4 mi	3 mi	Belly Dance	5 mi LSD	15 mi
2	3 mi	Yoga	Rest	3 mi	4 mi	Belly Dance	7 mi LSD	17 mi
3	3 mi	Yoga	Rest	4 mi	4 mi	Belly Dance	9 mi LSD	20 mi
4	Yoga	4 mi	Timed Mile	3 mi	4 mi	Belly Dance	7 mi LSD	19 mi
5	Rest	Yoga	4 mi	3 mi	Rest	5 mi	10 mi LSD	22 mi
6	Rest	4 mi	Rest	3 mi	5 mi	Yoga	12 mi LSD	24 mi
7	Rest	4 mi	Rest	4 mi	4 mi	Yoga	15 mi LSD	27 mi
8	Rest	4 mi	Rest	Rest	2 mi	Rest	San Diego Half-Marathon	19.1 mi
9	Rest	4 mi	Yoga	6 mi	Rest	4 mi	16 mi LSD	30 mi
10	Rest	4 mi	Yoga	6 mi	Rest	4 mi	18 mi LSD	32 mi
11	Rest	6 mi	Yoga	5 mi	Rest	5 mi	20 mi  LSD	36 mi
12	Rest	7 mi	Timed Mile	7 mi	Yoga	7 mi	14 mi LSD	36 mi
13	Rest	6 mi	Yoga	7 mi	Rest	7 mi	20 mi LSD	40 mi
14	Rest	7 mi	Yoga	7 mi	Rest	7 mi	13 mi LSD	34 mi
15	Rest	5 mi	Yoga	4 mi	Rest	5 mi	10 mi LSD	24 mi
16	Rest	3 mi	Rest	4 mi	Rest	Rest	Vancouver Marathon	33.2 mi

I plan to typically do speedwork on Thursdays and run most of the miles on those days as either part of tempo runs, progressive runs or 800 repeats. I'm also giving myself permission to ditch a few miles here and there during this training if some snow shoeing opportunities come along. I've heard it's a great workout and am keen to try it once we have more snow again.

Have you taken any dance classes? Are you training for a spring marathon or half-marathon?

Moving the Mind

This amazing video hit my Facebook newsfeed yesterday, and if you haven't seen it yet, I encourage you to take a look. The presentation is fantastic, and the idea is simple: exercising 30 minutes a day is the best thing that you can do for your overall health.

As a runner who is allegedly training for an 8th half-marathon, I tend to think that I'm ahead of the game when it comes to get near-daily exercise, but this has not always been the case for me. And when the proverbial shit hits the fan - that time for myself is the first thing I throw out the window in an effort to get crap under control. When I was in the last stages of writing my dissertation, for example, I probably only got in 60-90 minutes of exercise a week, and, that compounded with the stress of finishing in time to start my job, meant I slept poorly, gained weight, and felt vaguely crappy almost all the time.

As an academic, sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to be an disembodied mind floating around thinking deep thoughts about the 16th and 17th centuries and deciphering the handwriting of people who have been long dead. There are times when my mind has so many tasks going on - working in a research project for a co-edited volume that has a deadline, writing lectures and reading for a new upper level/grad class, outlining my chapters for my book proposal - that, while my brain is working hard, my body is just sitting there for hours with the only movement being that of my fingers on the keyboard. Since the spring I have become better about getting up and moving around, after an hour or so, and, when I'm working from home on a project that can be conveniently set up on it, I use my makeshift standing desk. But this video is a reminder that no matter how much I'd rather just veg on the couch after a long day, if I haven't run yet, I should or I should go for a walk or do some yoga.

So for me this video was a reminder not only to reaffirm my commitment to half-marathon training, but also to walk more, stand more, and sit less (even as I'm hopefully being madly productive).

Let the Marathon Training Begin

After I found out that the marathon class that I had signed up for at the Y had been canceled, I spent a couple of days sulking and pouting.  Then - powered by lemon blueberry cupcakes - I came out of my funk and started poking around the internets to find a marathon training program. I wanted a training schedule that only called for four or five days of running because I want to lift weights at least once a week and do some yoga a couple of times a week, too. I only have so many hours to work out a week, and I don't think it's good for me to spend all of them running. Ultimately I picked a Runner's World program designed for a sub 5 hour marathon. Most weeks it calls for four days of running and at least one day of active rest. Once a month it calls for an additional day of running to do a timed mile.  Like many marathon training plans, it is a 16 week program. Since the Chicago Marathon is only 14 weeks away and since I had ran a marathon last month and a 10K less than two weeks ago, I decided to come in at week three of this program. My only doubt about this plan is that it calls for pretty much all of the easy runs - not just the long runs - to be run at a pace that is slower than marathon race pace. I would love some feedback from more experienced runners because I'm not sure I have the patience to run all of my 3-6 milers at around a 12min/mile pace.

I also decided that I want a more tactile journaling experience for logging the miles during this training cycle. So I bought myself a binder and a notebook and have been creating a marathon journal for Chicago. In it I'm keeping track of what my training schedule calls for and what I actually did, of course. What makes this different from just logging my training on daily mile or another program, though, is that I'm also creating motivational collages, jotting down things that inspire me, etc. I think I'll like having everything all in one place this time.

Next week I have a scheduled session with a sports psychologist who is a marathoner to talk over my goals. She specializes in the mental component of training, and I believe that following my training program and working with her on visualization techniques and so forth will allow me to achieve my goal of not only showing up at the start line of Chicago, but completing the race in under 5:00:00.

Week 1 Training Schedule (for simplicity's sake I'm calling this week 1 instead of week 3):

Monday - 4 miles easy

Tuesday - rest

Wednesday - 4 miles - hillwork

Thursday - active rest (lifting and x-train)

Friday - 4 miles easy

Saturday - 9 miles

Sunday - rest

Are you currently training for a marathon or half-marathon? If so, what kind of training program are you using? What do you see as its pros and cons?

July Goals

First off, I want to thank everyone who commented on my last post. The cupcakes and Harry Potter helped immensely, as did a long talk with my husband and a fun and relaxing day yesterday that involved an 8K race, a few hours of quality work on my article, and then reading, eating, and chatting on my deck in the late afternoon and evening. We didn't see any fireworks this year, but it was the reset that I needed to get back on track.

Watching the fireworks on Rockaway Beach, NY, July 4, 2008

The year is half way over, so I've been evaluating where I stand with some of my long-term goals for 2011 and trying to keep them in mind as I set my goals for the month of July.  I have lots of running and writing on deck.

Writing/Professional Goals 

- Finish revising an article and resubmit it to an academic journal. If I don't succeed in accomplishing this goal, I am going to have to stop writing this blog and reading other blogs until this is off my desk.  

- Write a draft of the conference paper I will be presenting in August. I still have some reading and research to do for this, as well, but I need to start getting my thoughts down on the page - even if they aren't as fully formed and polished as I'd like to be. I find that it's often through the process of writing and agonizing over how badly I'm writing that I figure out what I actually want to say.

- Write the syllabi for my three fall courses and three lectures for my new upper level course.  My summer break is more than half way over so it's time to start getting the jump on the fall semester.

- Finish organizing my new office on campus and establish good writing and work habits while using it. I got a new office with a window (the view isn't great but yay for natural light!) and a much bigger desk. I'm going to try working on campus a couple of days a week for the month of July to see if I can establish some good writing mojo to carry into the start of the next academic year.

Fitness/Health Goals
- Run 90 miles. I picked a marathon training program (more on that later), and I want to do all the scheduled miles. I'm hoping to do my long runs and some of my shorter Wednesday runs with a local running group.
- Create a Chicago Marathon training journal and inspiration book. I was very much inspired by Amanda to do this. While I log my workouts on daily mile and often blog about the experience of my training, I think I'm lacking a more tactile experience with my training.  I'm hoping this will help me to visualize running the race in my goal time and inspire me on days when I'm feeling disheartened.
- Journal everything that I eat. This is part of my larger 2011 goal to maintain a food journal for the entire year. I'm hoping to get back on track for a solid second half of the year with this goal. While my real reason for maintaining a food journal is to make healthier choices, I wouldn't be opposed to losing a few pounds as a result either.
- Do yoga at least twice a week. I'm hoping to get a couple of practices in out on my deck when weather conditions are good for it.

What are your goals for the month of July? Any big career moves or training plans? Any new adventures? I hope all of my American readers had a wonderful and safe 4th of July!