Time to Plan

"An idea without a plan is just a dream."

Okay so back in December we found a race in Houston. Angie's Half Crazy! Half Marathon. Aimee was excited about the unique Texas sized medal. I liked the idea of running somewhere warm. My sister-in-law has friends where we would be able to crash. The Ohio delegation would be about 6 in strength.

Angie's course is very flat with elevation change of about 25 feet. Total gain over the 13.1 mile course is 102 feet. So it should be fast...right?

Aimee and I found a training plan on Runner's World. The FIRST Half Marathon Training Plan.

FIRST stands for Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training.

The training plan caught Aimee's interest because you only run three times a week. This could be an interesting plan since we are used to swimming and biking during the week also. We both also have additional cross training with her Body Sculpting and me doing Crossfit at Coca.

With only three days of running the plan is rather aggressive. Very aggressive. The example in the training plan shows the paces for a 1:30 goal. I calculated the paces for a 1:25 AND 1:30 finish. As I looked at the training I told myself to suck it up and just do it. The speed workouts are fast but short in duration. The tempo runs are shorter but more intense than my training runs from the summer. It's....doable.

It didn't take long for me to start re-thinking my goals. Perhaps it was the 4 x 400 on the treadmill at 5:37 pace that had me feeling like I would get spit off the treadmill and through the window. Or the tempo runs at 6:37 pace that left me gassed after one mile. And these are the paces for the 1:30 finish...forget about the 1:25 pacing.

I haven't done any real speed work in several years due to all the long course racing. Also coming out of the off season with some lofty goals may not be the best plan of attack, especially since this race is about 4 weeks earlier than anything in the Cleveland area.

So we had our goals laid out and a plan to achieve those goals.

Time to execute.