12/18/07

Feeling better

Saturday, I was still feeling icky, you know that feeling. Well I went for a long run and did another 8 miles, and I could tell that I was sick. It took me 45 seconds longer than last weekend to complete the 8 miles. Talk about slowing down.

The good news is that I am feeling better and will get some more running in today, through Friday and then a long one on Sunday maybe 10 miles.

Now that I am a beginner runner that never took to much time thinking about training, except to go out and run some. When I felt like it, I would stop. Well now I do have some question for all of you, during the week between long slow runs, when I am out running the short/slow runs, how far should I be running? What speed should I be attempting to run? What should the focus be for these runs? Should I be just running 8 miles each day? or should I scale back and if so by how much?

5 comments:

J~Mom said...

Most plans that I have looked at have you running 40-50 minutes on your weekly runs at this point. I think I would scale back your weekly runs just a bit as your weekends get longer. Keep up the great work!

Larissa said...

Glad you're feeling better! I had just started training for a mary when this little person in my belly showed up, so I don't have an answer for ya. There are some great training plans out there, though.

Have fun!!!! I'm a little envious.

Nancy said...

What ? You moved? cool, good for you and on to a cool new chapter.

I wish I had better advice, but I would look up a few plans and compare them. There is also a beginner one at the beginning of my blog if that helps at all. You are much further than I was at the start but you could modify it some. The main thing is you could get the idea of what they are doing.

Be careful adding speedwork and hills. It can be really good but can also cause injury so approach it carefully!!

:D the last thing is you might want to take any advice from someone who uses Non-runner in their name with a grain of salt. :D

Jess said...

The answers to those questions vary, depending upon the kind of plan or advice you follow. But you should definitely not be running the same distance for every run -- for one thing, that would be boring.

However, if I were to give you generalized advice -- I'd say that you should be doing about 3 shorter runs during the week, and one of those should be tempo run (faster pace) and one should be slightly longer in mileage. So an example week (in the beginning) could look like so:

Monday: 3 miles (tempo)
Tuesday: Rest or XT
Wednesday: 5-6 miles
Thursday: 3 miles
Friday: Rest
Saturday: 8-10 miles
Sunday: Rest or XT

Then, as your plan skips along, you would gradually increase mileage -- but remember, by no more than 10% weekly.

Keep in mind, I am no expert. Best to look at several plans and tailor them to what works for you.

Marcy said...

I agree with Jess, depending on what plan you roll with depends on what you'll be doing. For my last HM I only ran 3 days a week. 2 short runs of 5-6 miles. One day would be track work, the next running day would be a tempo run, and then the 3rd day would be my long slow run. And then X-training on the off running days.