Yup, just finished week 3 of my half marathon training. This week was a little wacky with life getting in the way and making me rearrange my schedule this week. Hopefully all that stuff is done now and I can get back to my strict training plans. Only exception is the next two days...we had a yard sale yesterday (more $$$ to spend at the expo in January!) so I did my long walk/run today. So instead of having a training run/walk tomorrow, I'll cross train tomorrow and do the run/walk Tuesday instead. Wednesday is a regular rest day, then Thursday will be back to normal.
Today did 6.41 miles. Started off about 80 degrees out and finished at 85 degrees. It was sunny and clear the whole time. About 60% of my route was shaded but that other 40% was smack out there in the sun...whew! But I do seem to be getting faster...my weekday short run/walks I'm having to go more miles to fill up the time. My first week I started with 2.55 miles for the short ones, now I'm at 3.06 for the same amount of time and it looks like I'm going to have to map a longer route again! So yay for me on getting faster!
Next weekend, Halloween morning (Saturday) is the Women in Distress SafeWalk-Run 5K at Markham Park. I signed up for the timed run...this will be my 2nd timed 5K and 3rd 5K overall. I am participating as part of my Spark Fort Lauderdale team (from the free sparkpeople.com website that I am using for weight loss). We are hoping to raise at least $1000 as a team...so far we're only at $145 for outside donations, $85 of which is from my friends/family (our registration fee counts toward it too but I don't know how many are signed up on our team). If anyone is reading this and wants to help out (even $10 helps!), the site to donate on behalf of our team is http://www.active.com/donate/safewalkrun2009/SPARKTEAM
Okay, gotta go make some lunch so will write again later this week!
MAKING IT HAPPEN- Reading, reviews & travel. Sometimes you just have to make things happen.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
10/3/09-Introduction to me
Hello everyone...I'm Carra and this is my first blog on this site. I am 39 years old and live in Southeast Florida (extreme Western Broward county, right before you hit the Everglades). I've lived down here almost all my life (yup, that's right, a native Floridian!) except for 5 years while I was up in northwest mountains of North Carolina going to school---go Appalachian State! I want to use this blog to record my journey as I lose weight and become a runner who eventually completes a full marathon.
I actually started this journey back in September 2008 when I re-acquainted myself with the Sparkpeople.com website. It is an amazing FREE site that has nutrition and fitness trackers and offers teams tailored to all sorts of things-your age, geographic location, interests, etc-where you can connect with others in your same (or similar) situation to get and provide support. There are tons of articles on nutrition, fitness, motivation and more. I could spend hours on there every day just learning (and sometimes I do).
When I started, I weighed 252.2 pounds and really never bothered getting any form of exercise other than the stairs at work. I started walking almost every day...not far, maybe 1-2 miles at a time. By the start of this summer, I had lost 37.2 pounds (I'm currently at 215). Sometime in late December '08 I ran across an article on Sparkpeople that had a guide to prepare you to complete a 5K. I thought "hey, I could do that" and so I started browsing the internet for other information. I started following their plan and being running across other information and somehow I found information about Disney's Princess Half Marathon weekend. I saw they had a 5K that weekend too and thought that would be a great first 5K for me. And so I set out to prepare for it. It was not a timed race, just a "fun run" type thing. They did have a 15 minute/mile pace requirement so I was concentrating my effort on meeting that. I wound up finishing in 47:37 (timed on my heart rate monitor watch), a 15:21 minute/mile pace. I was 224 pounds at the time.
My 2nd 5K was 5/25/09 and I didn't really do any kind of preparation for it. This was a timed race and I finished in 47:58, a 15:35 minute/mile pace. A little slower than my first one (but I am not sure the time from my first one is correct since it is not "official") but I was still happy with it since I wasn't really prepared to "race" it. I was 215 pounds for this race.
I have another 5K Halloween morning. I am still at the 215 pound mark---this summer I wasn't really watching my nutrition and was erratic with my exercising. I have gotten back into the groove of things now as I am signed up for my first half marathon in January---at Disney of course! It is on January 9th (my godson's birthday---he and his parents will hopefully be joining me there) and I start my official training plan this Monday, 10/5/09. I plan on walk/running it as I will not be at the point where I can run the whole thing by then. I will be blogging about my journey to my first half marathon and my continuing weight loss journey here.
Hope I don't bore anyone...but this is mostly meant as an outlet for me so I have a log of my journey. You are welcome to come along with me and offer any insight you may have...anything to make this more fun and fruitful is appreciated!
Carra
I actually started this journey back in September 2008 when I re-acquainted myself with the Sparkpeople.com website. It is an amazing FREE site that has nutrition and fitness trackers and offers teams tailored to all sorts of things-your age, geographic location, interests, etc-where you can connect with others in your same (or similar) situation to get and provide support. There are tons of articles on nutrition, fitness, motivation and more. I could spend hours on there every day just learning (and sometimes I do).
When I started, I weighed 252.2 pounds and really never bothered getting any form of exercise other than the stairs at work. I started walking almost every day...not far, maybe 1-2 miles at a time. By the start of this summer, I had lost 37.2 pounds (I'm currently at 215). Sometime in late December '08 I ran across an article on Sparkpeople that had a guide to prepare you to complete a 5K. I thought "hey, I could do that" and so I started browsing the internet for other information. I started following their plan and being running across other information and somehow I found information about Disney's Princess Half Marathon weekend. I saw they had a 5K that weekend too and thought that would be a great first 5K for me. And so I set out to prepare for it. It was not a timed race, just a "fun run" type thing. They did have a 15 minute/mile pace requirement so I was concentrating my effort on meeting that. I wound up finishing in 47:37 (timed on my heart rate monitor watch), a 15:21 minute/mile pace. I was 224 pounds at the time.
My 2nd 5K was 5/25/09 and I didn't really do any kind of preparation for it. This was a timed race and I finished in 47:58, a 15:35 minute/mile pace. A little slower than my first one (but I am not sure the time from my first one is correct since it is not "official") but I was still happy with it since I wasn't really prepared to "race" it. I was 215 pounds for this race.
I have another 5K Halloween morning. I am still at the 215 pound mark---this summer I wasn't really watching my nutrition and was erratic with my exercising. I have gotten back into the groove of things now as I am signed up for my first half marathon in January---at Disney of course! It is on January 9th (my godson's birthday---he and his parents will hopefully be joining me there) and I start my official training plan this Monday, 10/5/09. I plan on walk/running it as I will not be at the point where I can run the whole thing by then. I will be blogging about my journey to my first half marathon and my continuing weight loss journey here.
Hope I don't bore anyone...but this is mostly meant as an outlet for me so I have a log of my journey. You are welcome to come along with me and offer any insight you may have...anything to make this more fun and fruitful is appreciated!
Carra
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