Sunday, April 22, 2012

Sunday Thoughts and Refocusing

So I'm meal planning for this week. It's been a while since I actually did a meal plan for the week. My oldest's baseball schedule has really thrown a wrench into the meal planning. This week we still have a very busy week around here, but I know I need to have a plan in place to continue to be successful. So, here we go:

Monday: Baseball practice- means picnic dinner for the kiddos and a salad on the go for me :)
Tuesday: Gymnastics- Taco night, something easy and quick to have when we get home.
Wednesday: Baseball game- Chicken Pot Pockets from Hungry Girl for yummy fuel before the game
Thursday: Gymnastics followed by Baseball game- This will be a dinner on the go for the kiddos and then I will plan to eat when we get home from baseball.
Saturday: I have a 31 party and the kiddos will have a babysitter, so they luck out and get to choose what's for dinner.
Sunday: Leftovers

Ok, so onto my thoughts...I have completed 4 half marathons this year so far. My next one is in 4 weeks. I am thinking that I may take a break for the summer. I don't have any official races on the schedule- I haven't found any offered locally during the summer (don't know why- I think it's fun to run when it's 90 degrees outside...). My original plan was to go out and run the 13.1 distance, time it myself and that was going to count as my personal half. The plan was to do it in the evening (a little cooler) or early morning. I still may do this, but I really want to concentrate on speed and when I do a half, it has usually taken me about a week to get motivated to train again. Which then only leaves me about three weeks to get ready for the next race. With that happening, I have found it hard to focus as much on speed as I would like to. So, I am still trying to make a plan and now focusing more training time on my next half, the Diva Half Marathon in N Myrtle Beach.

Tomorrow I start phase 2 of JMBR. I'm looking forward to seeing what workouts 5 and 6 are like this week as well as starting a new cardio workout. My plan is to run tomorrow (long interval day) and also do workout 5 of JMBR.

What do you do when you feel like you need to change up a plan (and a goal) you've set for yourself? I am having a little trouble- feeling like I am not up to the challenge I set for myself, but I also want to do my best to improve speed and I am not sure how to do that when I am missing about a week of training every week because of recovery. Thoughts?

2 comments:

  1. Can you send me dinner? Sounds like a great food plan :)!

    Here in AZ there are very few races to be found. I did find a 5K summer series last year, but it's tough to even do a 5K when it's 100 out. So, not much on my calendar for the summer.

    Working on speed is not a bad thing, but you probably need to adjust your racing plan a bit. You can still do your races, but instead of trying to go full out, you'll have to treat them as more of training runs. Don't set PR goals, don't race full out so that it takes so long to recover. You just have to adjust things a bit, but you can still do it.

    Personally, I'd be careful that you don't burn yourself out. A half marathon a month is a great goal, but if that's the goal, it needs to be the only goal. You shouldn't try to PR on half marathons and increase your speed.

    That's not to say that you won't get to that point. You can get to that point, but pace yourself (no pun intended) :)!

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  2. I'd send you dinner if I thought it'd get there okay :)

    Thank you for all of the advice! I am thinking I will take off from the races through the summer and continue with training to work towards a faster pace. One of my main goals is to be able to run the WDW wine and dine with my husband in November- and not be slowing him down too much :) I still have the Diva half next month, but beyond that I am planning on a new training schedule to focus on improving speed.

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