Bring on the Hills ... treadmill style

Tuesday, 6/7 - 3 miles

• 3.12 miles, 37' 20" minutes, 11' 57" min/mile average pace, 157 BPM average heart rate

I felt much better when I woke up this morning. You would think that if you give your body a day off from exercise, it would be grateful and be ready to go the next day. Maybe I pushed myself too much last week even though I tried not to. I am also going to try switching up what I eat for lunch and my afternoon snack to see if that gives me more energy. I know that my breakfast is not causing the change in my energy level because I pretty much eat the same thing every morning (yogurt with granola) and even had it before my long run on Saturday without a problem. I did have a cup of coffee yesterday morning but that doesn't usually have a strange affect on me. I certainly felt less fatigued today at work so I decided to try something new with my training runs this week. Today, I stumbled across a website (McMillan Running Calculator) that can help you figure out what your pacing should be for almost every workout imaginable based on a previous best time. I know that setting a goal for my first half marathon is utterly insane. Normally, any program for beginners would not advocate setting a time goal. Usually, the only goal is to finish the race. Deep down inside, I know that I can and will finish this race. So I did the unthinkable, I have set a time goal for my first half marathon. My official time goal is to finish in less than 3 hours. According to the McMillan Running Calculator, that time goal is very possible based on my most recent 5K race time. My time goal is a realistic one and that is why I chose it.

My workout tonight was a really good one. Since I am going to be running my Tuesday and Thursday workouts on the treadmill, I have decided to start doing intervals and tempo runs. Today, I tried hill intervals. I know that a treadmill is a treadmill and should not be confused with running on the road but I want to make the most of my training runs so I am going to try to accomplish this using the treadmill. I started my workout with a 5 minute walk at 3.0 mph and 1.0% incline. After my warm up, I predded the "variety" button and chose the random workout. I increased my pace to 3.5 mph, which I maintained for 5 minutes. After that, I increased my pace to 4.0 mph for the rest of the 3 miles. The random workout didn't change the speed of the belt but is did vary the incline from 0% to 3.0%. Once my 3 miles was completes, I slowed the pace back down to 3.0 mph and set the incline to 0% and walked for 10 minutes. Surprisingly, I felt really good after my run and I was totally shocked when I found out that my average pace was less than a 12 minute/mile. I know that I have been really close to that mark before but I don't think that I have ever been below it.