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First Week And A Half With Trained In Terre Haute In The Bag.

Its been a little more running than I have been used to as in the number of workouts per week, but the distances are a little shorter per work out as well. At first have to admit I was a little intimidated by running nearly every day as normally I would run two short runs and one long per week the short runs being half the distance of my long run and my long run being my target distance for the week, each week I would increase the target distance  until I achieved my goal. I always felt like I needed a day or two between runs to recover sometime i would even stretch the recovery time far enough I would have to miss one of my short runs.
There are three principles to this program:

1.  Efficiency based training, teaches the body to perform at an efficient level, this is achieved by training at such a level. Constant training @ 80% of your maximum VO2 ability will enable your muscles to work at a high level for a long period of time.
2. Progressive overload which is simply, stressing your muscles then letting them heal stressing them a little more then healing again.
3. Hard easy training builds upon the first two principles and is determined by distance and duration since all training is done at 80% of VO2 Max. The pace of a two mile run would be considerably faster than of say an eight mile run, it is the effort that remains constant.

All of that being said this is what my first 2 weeks of training looked like:

Sun Jan 8th:  8 miles (this was prior to TNT starting)

1. Mon 9th:  TNT meeting did not run
2. Tues 10th: 2 miles
3. Wed 11th: 1 mile
4. thurs 12th 2 miles
5. Fri 13th rest
6. Sat 14th 3 mile Group run (I ran on my own that evening due to my Son's Wrestling Meet)
7. Sun 15th 2 miles
8. Mon 16th Rest
9. Tues 17th 3mile Group run (turned out to be 4 miles and I left out at a 3 mile tempo)
10. Wed 18th 2 miles 
11. Thurs 19th 3miles
12. Fri 20th will be a rest day 
13. Sat 21st will be a 4 mile group run 
14. Sunday the 22nd will be 2 easy miles

Tuesdays will all be group runs and will be short and intense while Saturdays group runs will be long runs. The pattern continues each week and a mile is added each week to the Saturday runs and the distance also increases for the other days of the week but at a slower pace (more like a mile every 3-5 weeks). With the rest of life getting in the way of this running thing I can already see some of my runs are going to have to be treadmill runs.

Since I run with Endomondo GPS tracking on my smartphone all the time I have been able to create some graphs of my training to see how its been going and I like what I am seeing so far. I'm only at 9 miles starting with Monday the 16th this week but as you can see from the schedule above I still have 6 miles to go for this week so it should be a pretty good week for me.

Below is an Endo record of Tuesdays group run (I'm kinda proud of it, it was a good one for me), Since I wasn't running from my house and don't mid sharing it publicly I have made the map view public so you can see what that looks like, also all of the sliders and buttons work so you can see how it works, if your into any outdoor activities and want to track it you should give Endo a try its available for all of the smart phone platforms and its free. I have been using it for over a year now and love it.  I linked to it above but here's another Link and if you do get it I would be happy to have you as a friend so send me a request.

There it is my first 8 mile run of this year, I'm kinda proud of that one too as it was a very enjoyable run and I felt good the whole way. When I started yesterday it was 28 degrees so I started in a pair of running pants but at the half way point I was pretty warm so I took them off and ran back in my shorts (Yes I mean running shorts not my underwear) which was nice at 30'ish degrees with the sun shining shorts were very comfortable to run in. Yesterday was also my first run of the year with my Camelbak on which allowed me to stow the pants for the run home. A couple of things I have found for long runs are:
1.) Hydrate along the way  and the Camelbak makes that possible, I do not wait until I'm thirsty to drink I just take a sip often probably as often as every couple of minutes with a target of finishing all of my water just before the end of my run, yesterdays target was 1 bottle of water. If you have never run with a Camelbak its not too bad grated its not as good as carrying nothing but I have tried just carrying a bottle and a fanny pack both of which just stress me out but the Camelbak doesn't and after a few time of running with it you barely even realize your wearing it. It is also real handy to carry your junk in I generally carry GU, gum, my phone, an ID and my keys if I'm not running from the house.
2.) GU is my other secret if you will and I just follow their directions and hit one 15 min prior to the run and one about every 4 miles there after, (the instructions say every 45 min but that works out to somewhere between 4 and 5 miles so I just do it every 4.
Last year when I first started running any distance I had trouble getting through 5 miles and hydrating along the way was the key to fixing that problem the next mileage I had trouble with was getting through 8 miles and GU solved that one. Now who knows what the next hurdle will be and what will be the fix for it but as I train for the Ascent I am sure I will find them as I know what it takes to get me through a 2 and half hour workout but part of my strategy for the Ascent will be to train for it as though it was a full marathon in distance as my goal will be to finish it in 4 and a half hours or less which is where I think I would be for a full marathon. One thing I think  I learned last year during the Mini was that I hit some of the Gatorade stops along the way and I felt much better than I did during my training runs, that may have been the adrenaline from the event but I do think the electrolytes along the way couldn't have hurt so as I train I plan to incorporate it into my routine.
Well tonight I have my first meeting with Trained in Terre Haute and as such I'm looking forward to getting the training program and meeting some of the people I will be training with.

Today's work out, was a pretty good one albeit that its a little slower than my last two but I was taking it easy and enjoying the ride for the first mile then stepped it up for the last two. Speaking of enjoying the ride I picked that slogan up from an ad for my new running shoes, the Mizuno Wave Prophecies, today was my second run in them and so far I really like them they are by far the best shoe I have ever worn to run in and they are my second pair of Mizuno's, I am hooked.

It was pretty chilly this evening I think it was 28 when I headed out, which I have found I really like, it does kinda suck when you step out but 10 min or so into the run its really nice, I typically wear a pair of Under Armor cold weather running pants and one long sleeve and one short sleeve tech shirts along with a beanie and a pair of really thin gloves which is perfect for me. I can typically wear this outfit from about 15 to the low 30's at which point the pants become pretty annoying so I go with shorts and loose the beanie and gloves but keep the two tech shirts.

Part of my pre-run ritual is to eat an energy gel 15 min before I run I always get the GU jet blackberry as it is the only GU product that has 2x caffeine but our local GNC was out Sunday so I had to order some and since I've been out for about a week I picked up a few packs of CLIF Shots Mocha with caffeine at Wal-Mart of all places and let me say this, OMG they taste like eating Hershey chocolate syrup strait from the bottle, I like it. Note: The GU jet blackberry kinda tastes like crap but they rock for energy.  While I was adding the link to CLIF shots web page I was doing a little reading they got a turbo formula sounds like just what I need 


Immediately after my runs I use two products for recovery Gener 8 Vitargo S2 and Dymatize Elite Recoupe  the first is a carb drink to refuel the muscles and aid in recovery the other is BCAA's in a powder I get them both in orange flavor and mix them in a magic bullet with water. I used to take A GNC recovery protein shake which didn't do bad but I had trouble digesting it, after talking with the "drug dealers" down at GNC they turned me onto the above products and I really like these two in combination as I seem to recover quicker from my workouts than with the protein shakes.

This will serve as a record of just how stupid a Hoosier can be, from today forward I'm going to start blogging of what I'm doing to train first for the Indianapolis Mini Marathon and then for the Ascent which is a half marathon up Barr Trail on Pikes Peak, why? I'm not sure but from the first time I saw Pikes Peak I wanted to climb it, which is really not too big of deal as thousands of people have done it so I thought why not enter the race and just run up it, so that's what I'm going to do, partly just because the mountain is there but mostly because its something I have decided should be on my bucket list because it will be a true test of what I'm made of and a true accomplishment if I can complete it.

I'm not sure of how much I will write here but I will try to do it enough to have a record of what it's going to take for me to get from the cornfield to the summit

Step 1: Well maybe step 3 or 4 or 6 I dunno but my first real step was that I had to qualify for the Ascent, it's probably for the best but they wont just let you show up and say you can do it you have to prove that your capable of at least having a clue of what you getting into, by among other things being able to run a 1/2 marathon in under 2 hrs 30 min which I did during my first Indy Mini Marathon attempt last year with a 2h 11 min finish 

Step 2: Last year I trained myself for the Mini and since it was my first race I didn't feel I did too bad of a job  but I really didn't and don't know what I'm doing and as a result I was injured quite a bit last year, this year I'm going to train for it with a group,   (TNT) Trained in Terre Haute. I can't check this one off yet but I have signed up for the program and am eager to start

Step 3: Start training for TNT so that I'm not killing myself in January, check, I've been doing that since the first week of December and am not doing too bad, below is where I've been this month and where I'm at today

Step 4: Will be to get entered in the race, which will be the first thing I'm a little worried about as they only accept 1800 runners for the Ascent, there have been some years that the race sells out pretty quick (see below from their website) I will be in wave 2

"Entry Status
General Registration:
Ascent Wave 1 - filled in 3.75 months vs 4.25 in '10, 4.5 in '09 and 4.25 in '08
Ascent Wave 2 - filled in 5.5 wks vs 9.5 days in '10, 3.3 wks in '09 and 7.7 wks in '08
Marathon Field 1 - filled in 1h39 vs 45mins in '10, 1 day 10h in '09 and 26 mins in '08
Marathon Field 2 - filled in 17 hours vs 5.25 hours in '10, 5 days in '09 and 50 mins in '08"


They have not set the registration dates yet so I have to make sure I don't miss it

In my next post I will talk about some of my strategy and what I think I'm going to need to do to get there