I started this past Saturday with my long run. The FIRST plan calls for three runs per week, plus at least two days of cross-training, which isn’t too different from what I have been doing lately just because of schedule constraints. This plan, however, calls for much faster paced runs than what i had been doing, and my long run pace needed to be adjusted accordingly. Normally I would run around 8:00/mile pace for long runs and my easy runs, but FIRST calls for running long runs at Half Marathon Pace + 20 seconds, closer to 7:20/mile than 8:00. I was worried I would feel too tired by the end of the 9 miles to keep that pace, but I was surprisingly energetic by the end.

Then last night I had my first “Key Workout #1″ which was 5 x 1000m @ 5:58/mile pace. The tough part about this for me will be keeping track of my pace on the treadmill. I’ve found that my Nike+ iPod system isn’t terribly accurate on a treadmill, especially at faster speeds. Most of my intervals which were at a much faster pace, didn’t show as much faster as they should have. So I guess I’m not really sure how closely I hit the pace, but at the very least I know I got a good workout in, and it was better than the 5 or 6 easy miles I would have done otherwise.

I’ll probably spin tonight on our new spin bike (that’s another post altogether), and tomorrow night is my first FIRST tempo run. I’ll try to update here as often as I remember to, in case anyone is interested in how the program works.

Clock Time: 1:35:52
Chip Time: 1:35:14
Overall Place: 246
Division Place: 24

And my Garmin data is available here – http://connect.garmin.com/activity/22331046.

Overall, I’m very happy with my results. 246th overall out of over 17,000 finishers is pretty decent. I was about a minute off of my PR, but considering the weather I’m not surprised. It was below freezing at the start, and started raining/snowing/sleeting just before we headed over to the start line. It turned into a light but steady rain just before the gun went off, and stayed that way the whole time. I got a pretty bad cramp around mile 7, so that slowed me down a bit. Other than that, I felt pretty good the whole time.

The way the race start is staggered, I had to wait for Megan for almost an hour, which was miserable in the cold rain, but at least I was able to hid behind the refreshment tent and stay out of the wind. When she finished, we were able to get a picture together, which actually turned out ok.

I’ll hopefully put some pictures of the rest of our trip up on Facebook later, so keep an eye out for those.

So now that the race is less than a week away, I just have one more easy run tonight, and a short tempo run on Wednesday. I may try to get in a few easy miles Thursday or Friday as well, just to keep from getting stale.

To make things a little bit easier for ourselves, we bought a treadmill at the beginning of October, and it’s certainly helped.  I have still been doing my long runs outside, since I try to keep my treadmill time to a minimum.  But I have gotten up to doing 10 miles, and my pace was faster than I trained with in the past, so hopefully that bodes well.  Also, I think Insanity really helped with my core strength.

I’ll try to get another good Tempo run in this week, and another set of good mile repeats next week, then we’ll start to taper as we get set to travel.  The course is much flatter than the Oak Brook course, so even if my fitness is the same as it was then, I should be able to improve my time.  I’ll hopefully post some more training details as the next couple of weeks progress, but I’m looking forward to this race, and I hope it goes well for both of us.

The 400m pool swim start, besides taking almost 40 minutes to get in the water, was fairly uneventful.  I got a good start, and stayed pretty consistent when I wasn’t trying to get around slower swimmers.  I got out of the water, and felt pretty good, a quick look at the clock had me estimate my time around 9:00, which I thought was pretty good for my fitness – official time 8:07.

It’s a decent run from the pool to the transition area, and I was a bit out of practice, so the T1 time was a bit over 4:00.  Then on to the two-loop bike course which had a few hills.  It was also pretty windy this morning on the course, which hurt heading south, but felt great coming back north.  Altogether, I was able to average a 19.7mph speed, with a finish time of 41:42, seven seconds faster than last year.

T2 was pretty uneventful, I switched shoes, grabbed my hat, and was off running in just under 2:00.  As soon as I started running, I knew I was in trouble.  Usually my legs feel sluggish getting off the bike, but my Garmin shows my pace right in line with a normal 5K time.  Today, I felt extra sluggish, and I was barely faster than my normal easy run pace.  I really struggled to stay under 7:45/mi pace for the first half mile, and was able to slowly pick up the pace.  My third mile, I finally felt good and got into the low 6:00/mi range.  There was another runner over the last quarter mile or so who was trying to kick it in around my speed, so we kind of paced each other in, and my final 5K run time was 22:03.

Overall, I was satisfied with my effort, I just envisioned losing time on the swim and bike, not the run.  I finished in 1:18:07, for 249th place overall, out of over 1,700 finishers, and 25th place in my age division.  Considering I was not properly trained for it, I’ll definitely take that.

I only did pushups and Ab Ripper on Wednesday, so I will be restarting Week One of the Hundred Pushup Challenge tonight, followed by Ab Ripper X. This is my first recovery week for half marathon training, so it’s just three days of easy mileage.

I lined up race morning with the 6:00 pace group (they had signs out), and waiting for the start. It was a fair amount of people, so I wasn’t surprised to not move right when the gun went off, but I was surprised to find people walking with strollers lined up in front of me. Apparently they just let people stream in from the sides, and everyone got in at the front, making it extremely difficult for me to get a good start. I spent the first half mile weaving in and out of people, and only being able to go 7:30-7:45 pace. When I was finally able to pick up the pace, I was pretty steady at about 6:15, but the damage had been done, and my first mile was 6:55. After that, I was in the 6:00 range, and kicked it in hard to cross the finish in 19:45. Had I been able to start unobstructed, I could have easily cut off another 30 seconds, and maybe a minute – which would have been a PR.

I’m not going to complain about it, but it is good to know that P90X has helped me improve my running. Now I just need to take this gained strength, add in some decent run training, and start kicking some serious butt in the spring.

Also, this is now my final week of P90X. I’ve done two days so far, tomorrow is basically and off day, then two more days, and off day, and I’ll take the Fit Test again on Saturday. I’ll post all of my results then, hopefully there’s some decent improvements.

Mile 1 – 7:14
Mile 2 – 7:24
Mile 3 – 7:24
Mile 4 – 7:31
Mile 5 – 7:36
Mile 6 – 7:29
Mile 7 – 7:30
Mile 8 – 7:24
Mile 9 – 7:30
Mile 10 – 7:15
Mile 11 – 7:10
Mile 12 – 7:06
Mile 13 – 6:55
Final 0.1 – 0:26

I finished 101st overall, and 5th in my age division. Full results are available here.

I went 10 miles, planning on running the first 8 at 7:45 pace, and the last 2 at 7:30, which is the pace I hope to run next Monday. I was able to run the 7:45 pace for the first 8, and ran 7:10 for mile 9, and 7:07 for mile 10! I’m hoping to be able to run 7:30 for the first 10 miles in the race, and see what I can do for the last 5K. If all I can do is hold 7:30, or even drop to 8:00, I’d be OK with that. If I can pick it up like I did today, I’d be even happier.