Reaching for the Stars

Thanks for you many encouraging comments last week.  I have updated the stars and hope to get those blank stars filled in here this year.  I have been bouncing around 100 and 110 lbs lost for the past couple of months.  I have been much better the last couple of weeks eating healthy, but the scale hasn't reflected it yet.

Marathon Training Schedule

Jeff Galloway

I think I have decided on my training schedule for my first marathon in May.  I have heard about Jeff Galloway and started doing a little research about his training methods.   He contends that you can actually improve your times by including walk breaks.  This might work for me because I have a tendency to tank at the end of a race, especially longer distances.

The Long Run
Saturday was a long run and I put this to the test for the second week in a row.  I was able to go fifteen miles.  I was slow, but I don't think I could have done it at all without the walk breaks.  This was quite the jump in weekly miles which has it's risk.  The reason that the mileage was so high is that his training schedule is much longer than the other two I was looking at.  If I was going to do his schedule, this was the mileage I needed to do on Saturday.  I felt that if I could get this long run in without killing myself that I could continue on from here on out with his schedule.   This week backs off the mileage to recover from the run so hopefully I will recover and will be in sync with the rest of the training schedule.

I had my first slip of the winter season.  A few weeks back, I posted pictures of where the Provo Trail was covered with ice.  I should have used my head and realized that the ice was still in the same place.  The deception was when I walked over that part of the trail, there was a layer of snow on top.  I had been running up the canyon in the snow without problems.  Having a false sense of security, I was walking over the before mentioned section when BAM I was down.  I wasn't even half way through my run.  After taking a quick inventory, finding all my parts still in one piece, I continued on.  I am a little sore by my knee where I hit, but nothing that should stop me from training.

Here is a picture from a couple of weeks ago.  The ice was still there but the whole path was covered with snow.

You can see the ice just past the bridge.

I tried to take pictures.  I had my phone with me.  There was a place where I crossed over the river, on a bridge, to a closed off road to avoid the ice on the way back.  It was really pretty because the road was covered with snow and no one had been on the road. It was pretty cold, but I fumbled my phone out, tried to snap a picture and as I did my phone crashed.  I was too cold to stop and wait for the phone to start back up.  I have become disenchanted with my EVO.  It was a great phone at first, but the battery doesn't even last half a day with minimal use and it has become tempermental.  I will have to take my point and shoot with me next time.

I hope you are keeping appropriately busy and healthy this winter.  What have you been doing to keep up your fitness?

Hang in there and I will too.