The Need for "Speed"

In March I really slacked off, and I didn't do a single workout focused on speed. (Perhaps it would be more accurate to say "speed" as regular readers know that I'm not fast even at my fastest paces.) The first week of the month I was in taper mode; the second week of the month I was in recovery mode; the third week of the month I was still feeling a bit on the tired side. I think the tiredness that third week was from a combination of still feeling some lag after the half-marathon, feeling rather hungry a fair bit of the time as I adjusted to my first week of counting points on Weight Watchers Online, and the return to early mornings and classes. However, the rest of the month I just let myself be lazy.

I really felt it, too, when I did my virtual 5 by the 5th run last Tuesday. I not only ran my 5k eleven seconds slower than I did in February, I was sucking air pretty much the whole time from the effort of trying to run faster than normal. I'm going to sound like Captain Obvious here, but it really drove home the importance of regularly integrating speed into my weekly running routine if I truly want to post faster race times.

Back at the beginning of March, I was thinking that I needed to find some new speed workouts as I had been doing a lot of 800 repeats, but it looks like I'm back to close to square one with those. I know their going to be challenging, but I'm actually kind of looking forward to the renewed novelty of running 800s here again in a couple of days.

Do you regularly integrate speed work into your training? What are some of your favorite workouts focused on speed?

Progress Toward Goals: February in Review

I'm so glad February is almost over. I sucked at  making progress on my goals during this past month. For example, I totally fell off the journaling wagon. Actually it would probably be more accurate to say that I dived off of it and then went frolicking around in a magical land made of gingersnaps, chocolate cakes, cheese, and corn chips. What can I say? February was a fucking hard/busy month for me, and I'm not going to beat myself up. I am however going to try to stamp my passport and leave eating the weight of my feelings in cheese and chocolate land and regain entry into at least eating more fruits and vegetables land in March. On the plus side, I ran 76.12 miles during February, which makes it my highest mileage month since August of 2011. In terms of getting faster, I ran a faster timed mile than in December, a faster treadmill 5K than in January, and ended the month with my fastest 800 repeats workout in quite some time. I also went snowshoeing for the first time and got in a few walks here and there and spent some time on my yoga mat.

This month I was able to meet my professional goal of writing or revising at least 3 pages each week. Although I admit that I'm not anywhere close to where I wanted to be with it, I have made progress on an article manuscript. I've noticed that I tend to feel a lot better emotionally and mentally when I'm making steadier (if not quite daily progress) on research and writing, and that's been harder the past few weeks to maintain because of a new class prep and some other academic responsibilities. At least I also wrote a grant application this past month. Also most days I've managed to spend about 30 minutes doing lessons on Rosetta Stone.

February was another photography fail as far as consistently taking and posting photos for my 365 project goes, though I did take some photos that I liked over the past month. I didn't get as much recreational reading done this month as I did last month, as we were running a search for a faculty position in my department and I had a lot of grading to do. I only finished one book in February: Harry Potter y las Reliquias de la Muerte. I did, however, make progress on another novel -- I'm about a third of the way through Susanna Clark's Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norrel, which so far has just been a fantastically fun read. In terms of sticking to my budget, I can mark another x in the win column. I spent just over $100 in February. (I had $5.30 left from January.) My purchases were the J. Crew sweater worn in my Love List post, a pair of ribbed tights on clearance at Target, and a box of hair color.

How was February for you? Are you ready for it to be over like me or sad to see it go?

February Virtual 5 by the 5th 5K

This morning I started my day with coffee and "speed"work. Along with many other members of the running blog community, I'm participating in Mommy Run Fast's excellent 5 by the 5th challenge.

I'm trying to consistently do one work out that focuses on speed each week during this marathon training cycle and trying to use the series of something of a means of tracking my progress. I'm hoping that it will make for a stronger marathon in May and maybe a fast 5K and 10K in the summer. My goals for this virtual run, which I did on the treadmill, were to run the entire time, push myself to give a solid effort, and to beat my time from last month (31:19). I ran this month's 5K in 30:36. Overall, I felt pretty good on this run. I felt some tiredness in my legs during the second mile, so I backed off on the speed for a little bit and then tried to finish strong. My splits were 9:57, 9:48, 9:43, and 1:08. Woohoo for negative splits!

In other news, my wonderful spouse started a new job yesterday! Hooray for gainful employment! Right now he's working on a 3 month contract, but we're hopeful it will turn into something more longterm. While it's going to make some things a little more logistically challenging between car-sharing and not leaving our deranged but darling dog by herself for too long at a stretch, I have to admit I've been feeling some relief. I won't get paid in the summer and the cost of living is higher here than what we're accustomed to after a decade in the Midwest, so I'm happy that now it looks like we'll be able to ride out the summer months without having to dip into our savings.

November Goals

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, October wasn't the best of months for me goal-wise, but all we can ever do is keep moving forward.  So onto November!

My fitness/health goals for this month:
1. Run my (now half-)marathon on November 14th and do it faster than I ran my most recent half.  A time of 2:20 or under would be even better.
2. After the half, do yoga three days a week and run three days week.  One of those weekly runs needs to be focused on speed work.
3. Eat 5+ servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
4. Spend some time outside either running, biking and even just walking while it's still possible.

My writing goals for this month:
1. To channel the energy of NaNoWriMo but turn it into NaArtWriMo (National Article Writing Month).  Instead of writing an article, I will be working toward a daily word count of at least 300 words until I have a draft of this article written.
2. Write the syllabus for my upper level course that I'm teaching spring semester.
3. Revise and resubmit my other article. 

What are your November goals?  Are you running any races in the month of November?  How do your fitness goals change as it gets colder?