1st Half Marathon Distance! January 13/13 - Training Log

   It's been a couple weeks since I began this blog and it's interesting how I've begun to look at my training as I write about it. I'm not sure what this blog will turn into, but my original intent was to document my training and racing as I step into this new world. It's for the tough days so I can look back and see how I made it through other difficult times. It's for me to be able to celebrate my triumphs and prevent repeating mistakes. If it benefits anyone else through learning or interest than that is icing on my blog cake.

I wish Bay Front looked like this yesterday...

  Yesterday was my first half marathon distance! 21.1km seemed absolutely impossible to me just a few weeks ago. After all the calf strains I've had during the last 5 months I had all but given up on hopes of making any gains in distance this season. I had to return to the drawing board and come up with a new plan. My legs needed to build up the distance slowly. I decided increasing pace was now out of the question and I needed to simply work on distance. (yes I know a "I told you so" is owed here from a few individuals). I had to break it up though and decided I would run easy paces, around 6:00 - 6:15 min/km with a walking break of 0.25km every 3km. It was the perfect day for it too. Hamiltons' Bay Front park is my new home for running and yesterdays weather had it buzzing with people.

Enough hospital trips please!

  I began adding some short speed workouts into my week. Monday I put in a 6.5km interval run, getting my intervals to around 2:30min/km pace and my heart rate (HR) to around 165 bpm. Right where I want to see it for now. I also trained core and strength that night in the gym. Tuesday ended up taking an ambulance ride from work to North York Hospital where Chris came to my rescue. She is such an important part of my life now. She's my inspiration and always there when I need her. After an afternoon of vomiting, dry heaving, fading in and out of consciousness and horrific stomach cramps, testing showed nothing and the best guess was food poisoning. As far as we can tell, possibly salmonella from raw pumpkin seeds we bought. Wednesday I was back on my feet again and managed to eek out a 10km tempo run after work. Friday I was back in the pool after two weeks off and did a light 1000m workout. Chris came with me and got some great shots with the Go Pro camera while at the bottom of the deep end.

Chris takes amazing photos even underwater!

   Today was my first Masters Swim Workout. Central Memorial pool here in the Hammer has a Masters "workout" on Sunday mornings. No coaches, just a new workout printed out on the board at the end of each of the skill levels' lanes and an hour and a half to do it in. Can I say PERFECT for me! I may have eluded before to my disdain for coaching so this is a great chance to get a Master swim workout without the structure of a class.

   That being said about coaches, I do realize that I could greatly benefit from the knowledge of someone more experienced than myself. I have tossed around the idea of searching for a part-time or internet coach. Someone who could provide me with some workouts and review the resulting data to assist my efforts towards improvement. We'll see how this idea will unfold in the future.