Happy Tuesday and Happy Birthday to Harry Potter!! As you all know I am re-reading the books right now and in the books, his birthday is today!! Anyway, speaking of Harry Potter...I am a member of the Hogwarts Running Club (yes, you can laugh) and they have another virtual race coming up. I am thinking of doing it and wondering if anyone wants to do it with me. It is called the Royal 10k and is in honor of the character in the book named Kingsley Shacklebolt.
The proceeds go to a charity so of course you can feel good about the registration fee which is usually minimal. The medal is pretty cool also. You can check out the details here. It seems like a good idea to sign up since it is Harry's birthday!!
Now, onto a different subject. As I have said in the past I get great ideas on my long runs. Well, I remembered some of them this time. One of them had to do with my Chicago plan.
Some of you may know this about me, but for those who don't, I like to experiment on myself with different training ideas that are out there. I decided (on my long run last week) that I would experiment with one I learned in one of my coaching courses. It is the concept of Introduce, Improve, Perfect or IIP. It is generally done on the long run but I am sure you could put it in anywhere in your training program. I am going to use it with my long runs. You can use distance or time.
In the past I have always done my long runs by miles. On my run last week I decided I would try going by time instead. So, I changed my long runs from this point on (most of them) to go by time. So, following the concept, I would introduce a time-say 3 hours for a run one week. The next week I would improve on it-maybe run further, faster or stronger-feeling. The next week I would perfect it-perhaps with all the proper fueling, pacing and some race pace miles in there. You get the idea. You can take a look at it in my program below. You will notice that I recently changed the days of my long run so I just switched them in the top row. I am only putting the program from that point on as the rest was just base building. I just deleted all the rows so there wouldn't be so much to look at which is why they are all blank now.
Check it out here.
I also have had this thought while out doing my long runs. Why is it that we can run marathons then when we take a little time off and start training for our next one suddenly we get feelings of, "how am I going to run 26.2 miles, I can barely do my 15 miler this weekend!"
Am I the only one that thinks this? I have done several marathons, I know I can finish one but somehow each training cycle, I am like, "how am I possibly going to go 26.2 miles?? I suck at 12 or 15 or 17, whatever the mileage is that day."
Well, I guess I will wrap up for today. Here are a couple of pictures from my runs last week. I got a great one of a hot air balloon on my trail run and some pelicans (actually that was yesterday).
Have a great rest of the week! We are off to Scottsdale Friday for our anniversary. Yes, I know it is hot there (I like it). We will be keeping with our new tradition Chris started last year about running as many miles as years we have been married. This year is 17!! Since Chris has not been running as much we will do 7 on Friday and 10 on Saturday!!