Christmas workouts

It's not even 2011 yet, and I am already signed up for:

1. Two marathons - Shamrock in March and Baltimore in October
   
2. Two half marathons - The Cloud Snapple in January and The Maryland Half in May
   
3. A triathlon in August
4. A marathon relay in February
   

I am also planning on signing up for a 5K soon. So, while I completely ignored my normal healthy eating rules during holiday break, I stuck to my training plan without slacking. I really want to PR in the Shamrock marathon. My first marathon time was 4:41:52, which I am very happy with, since my only goal was finishing. I paid no attention to time whatsoever. At Shamrock, I am really hoping to get under 4:30. The course is flat (quite the opposite of Baltimore) and I am actually going to pay attention to timing, but I don't want to just rely on those factors. While I did some speed working when training for the Baltimore Marathon, I mostly focused on increasing my distance, as it should be for a first marathon. Now that its my second time around I want to really focus on speed work. Sadly my lame grad class is on the same night as track workouts, but I have until February before it starts and I am really going to have to push myself to get them done on my own after that. I also made a slight change to my tempo runs. We are supposed to do a half mile warmup and cooldown, and all the miles in between are tempo. For example, a 6 mile tempo run (what we are at right now) would be all tempo miles from mile .5 to mile 5.5. For some reason the half mile thing was throwing me off mentally. When training for the Frederick Half, where I knocked 14 minutes off my time, I did shorter tempo runs, but they were always faster than my Baltimore marathon ones. So I made the executive decision to change my warm up and cool down to a full mile. I think it helped. According to McMillan Running Calculator, my tempo runs should be between 8:18 and 8:39. On my last two tempo runs, my mile splits were:

8:32
8:06
8:34
8:25

and

8:19
8:28
8:33
8:33 (these look like I actually learned some pacing or something!)

The first run was in a hilly area near my apt and the second was in 22 mph winds (gusting to 31mph!). The second was also with a super fast friend who qualified for Boston (it was her easy run day, haha) which was great because without her I can guarantee those would have been much slower. I feel pretty good about those times, now I want to try to make sure my easy and long runs are a little quicker. I tend to really take it easy on those, which is ok to an extent, but I want to push myself a little and do some long run miles at marathon pace. I haven't done a single track workout yet but I am attempted to get over my fear/hatred of the treadmill on Sunday to do an interval workout! On Christmas Eve Mike came over and did a 14 mile run with me. I felt really good and stuck with my pattern of negative splits so that is a good sign. Tomorrow morning we are doing a 15 miler. I also am really loving this long run on Friday/sleep in and rest on Saturday deal. Sadly once break is over work is going to put a stop to that.

This time around I am really trying to stick with at least some strength training in addition to running. I didn't cut it out completely last time but I slacked for sure. I've heard how a strong core can make you a better runner and help avoid injury, so I asked for this for Christmas.
My good friend Marc got it for me. I don't actually hope to achieve six pack abs, because I love chocolate too much for that. But I do hope for some stronger abs, so I decided to actually take the challenge. Jillian says do the workout at least 5 times a week for six weeks, level 1 for three weeks followed by level 2 for three weeks. I've done level one three times so far this week and lets just say I am terrified of level 2. Jillian stays true to form and works your core like crazy, but also works upper body and has cardio intervals built in. I seriously love/hate her DVDs, they are always an amazingly tough workout. The workout is 35 minutes including warm up and cool down, so it's a substantial time commitment because I am not using it to replace anything, its an addition to my regular workouts. I am hoping by starting it before grad class starts again, during the early part of marathon training before the workouts get really long I can stick to it.

I also got this little baby......
can't wait to try out some recipes! They'll go great with some homemade bread from my new breadmaker :).