Cold Weather Running

I'll take a little break from my discussions about why Team in Training is not a scam to talk about training. The Shamrock Half Marathon is just eight weeks from today, and I need to step it up a bit. I have been doing some running this week, but no more than 2-4 miles at a time. Thursday, I only did a mile, but it was speed drills in which I ran treadmill intervals as a pace of seven minute miles - a very fast pace for me.

I considered going out with TNT yesterday, but there was some freezing rain and since I am not on the team, I would not get a cancellation email or call. So while they probably ran Saturday morning, I didn't want to drive all the way to Byrd Park and find that no one else was there. So I took it easy yesterday, which was not difficult, since there was a cold and steady rain much of the day. Yeah, I wimped out.

Today, although it was still cold and drizzly, I decided that I had to get in some running. I don't really like running in the cold, although compared with up north, it is not so cold here. I tend to get soaked with sweat from my body while my hands, ears, nose, and face get cold. My nose runs like crazy. But today, I decided that I would train a minimum of five miles and a maximum of eight. As things turned out, I covered eight miles, running about 65% of it and walking about 35%. I am no speedster, but I feel like at least my run interval is improving and I stuck with it almost every time today - not cheating on my run intervals and lapsing to more walking as I have done several times recently. After doing hardly any running for the last 18 months, I still have a long way to go. Eight miles (twice now) is my longest distance, and that is a long way to go from a half marathon. I would like to start increasing my run interval by about 5-10 seconds a week, and starting adding about a mile a week to get up to 12 or 13 miles over the next six weeks. That would give me one week or possibly two to reduce mileage for a given week, and then it would give me a two week taper. My thinking is that if I do 12 or 13 miles two weeks before the race, I'd cut back to about six or seven the weekend before.

Right now, I am not on pace for a PR. It might be doable, but I will have to remain injury free and train consistently to have any hope of that. But my plantar fasciitis pain is 90 to 95% better, and I am coming up on 10 years of surviving Hodgkin's lymphoma. So PR or not, just to do this race works for me.