10/6/09-Training plan started!

I started my half marathon training plan yesterday. I started off slow and easy...I figure there's plenty of time to go faster and further after I get used to everything. So yesterday (Monday) I had 5 minutes of warm up walking, then I did 3 minutes walking, one minute running eight times. Finished with 5 minutes of cool down walking. Since I was going slow I only did 2.55 miles. Shins were a little grumbly at first but the longer I went the better they felt. Today is cross training at the gym. Planning on elliptical, stationary bike and weight machines, probably 20 minutes of each. I've been doing the elliptical for about a week and a half and really like it. It does give my quads a heck of a workout...I'm slowly adding time on it-started at 15 minutes and hoping to up that to 20 today.

I made my own music mix for yesterday...put my iTunes in order by length of track, then found two 5 minute songs for warm up/cool down and eight each of 3 minute and 1 minute tracks. Made it really easy to know when to change from walk to run and back without having to keep checking my watch. I need to make a 4/1 mix and a 3/2 mix for future days when I'm doing those intervals. For the half in January though, I'm just making a playlist of songs regardless of length and my DH is going to overlay verbal cues on top of them to say when to change. Since I'm going to make the playlist 3.5 hours (just in case I need it that long, but I'm shooting for closer to 3 hrs) it'll be kind of hard to find enough good songs to walk/run to to fill that much time without constantly repeating.