10K Training Begins

Officially the 10K training begins tomorrow.  Over the past week I have put together a training plan that will last 14 weeks.  There are not many 10K races but I found one on April 14 in Winston-Salem which is about 30 minutes away from where I live.  Unless a closer race comes up, I am going to train for this race.  The 8K race (5 mile Beer Run) will be on March 17 St. Patrick's Day! That should be pretty cool since there is plenty of beer after the race.

I devised my own training plan based on 3 other plans I found online: a beginner 10K, intermediate 10K and half-marathon training plan.  I felt like I was more advanced already for the beginner 10K plan while the intermediate 10K plan was too advanced for me at this point. 

Here is the first week of my plan:

Monday - Cross train 45 minutes and core exercises
Tuesday - Run 3 miles and strength training
Wednesday - Run 3 miles and stretch
Thursday - Cross train 45 minutes and core exercises
Friday - REST!
Saturday - 35 minute tempo run
Sunday - Run 4 miles

WOW this is going to be an exhausting first week! I was able to keep my training plan on schedule with my other classes I take.  Tuesday is body pump (strength training), Wednesday is pilates (stretch) and Thursday is spin class (cross train). And to stick to one of my goals this year, I added core exercises twice a week.  Saturday will be speedwork alternating tempo runs and interval runs.  This will be interesting since I've never really done a tempo run before.  Sunday will be long runs starting at 4 miles the first 2 weeks then increasing by a 1/2 mile for 2 weeks.  Eventually it will increase to a 7 mile run the week before the 10K race.  But I'm not going to focus on that now!  Tuesday runs eventually increase to 4 miles and the Wednesday runs alternate between 3, 3.5 and 4 miles. 

I think I did a pretty good job with the plan.  Of course I can always adjust it as needed.  I just hope I can stay injury free.  One small set back can take weeks (or months) to get back on track.  My 3 mile run time today was 32:51.  Even though I only had one 5K race under 30 minutes, it seems like it will take forever to run that time again.  I had planned on running 4 miles today but after 2.5 miles, I just didn't have it in me.  I started to get a stitch (which usually never happens) and then I just felt like all my energy was zapped.  Of course, I really didn't eat much for breakfast and only had a banana for lunch.  I usually run in the evenings so I'm going to have to work on eating properly for these weekend runs that are in the afternoon.

I've also been keeping up with my runs on the Garmin Connect website.  It's pretty easy to use.  When I use my Garmin watch I just connect it to the PC and upload my runs.  Even when I don't use my watch, like on the treadmill, I can enter my information in manually.  But I am having a hard time with my one goal "take a daily multi-vitamin".  It seems so easy but I only remembered to take it one day last week! Have to work on that one.  My weight was actually up 0.6 pounds on my WW weigh-in last Thursday. Booo! This morning it was down quite a bit on my scales.  But I'm always less on my scales and less at the beginning of the week. Hopefully I can keep it down by Thursday's weigh-in enough to make goal!