In Training

One of the things I have been meaning to post about is what I have done to get ready for my upcoming 10K. I intermittently wrote about the C25K as I was doing it, but I haven’t really touched much on what I have done in preparation for this Sunday’s event.

During my last week of that first running program I started thinking about how to improve my jogging endurance. I chatted with a couple of Running Room employees, scoured the Internet for resources, and eventually came up with a plan of my own based on the recommendations I was able to amass.

I knew that I only had five weeks from the end of the C25K until this weekend’s race and that I would be pushing it to try and cram all of the training into such a short period of time, but I also really believed I could do it. I carefully crafted what I believed was a doable schedule and immediately started working towards my goal. Basically, I followed the same three days out of seven I had already been doing, but upped the amount of time and made changes to the intervals every two days rather than at the start of each week.

Sessions 1 & 2
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 7 minute cool down walk

Sessions 3 & 4
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 20 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 20 minute run
- 5 minute cool down walk

Sessions 5 & 6
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 10 minute run
- 6 minute cool down walk

Sessions 7 & 8
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 15 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 15 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 15 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 15 minute run
- 7 minute cool down walk

Sessions 9 & 10
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 20 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 20 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 20 minute run
- 5 minute cool down walk

Sessions 11 & 12
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 30 minute run
- 1 minute walk
- 30 minute run
- 6 minute cool down walk

Sessions 13 & 14
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 60 minute run
- 5 minute cool down walk

Session 15
- 5 minute warm up walk
- 65 minute run
- 5 minute cool down walk

I am proud to say that I have stuck with my plan and have had a lot of success with it! The only thing that was off is that I made a mistake and mislabeled my podcasts for the last two sessions so I accidentally did the final one yesterday instead of the fourteenth one. (It just means that I did an extra five minutes of running.) I still have no idea what the results of my efforts will be come race day, but I do know that I pushed myself to do the best that I could and that I feel like I accomplished a lot in a relatively short amount of time.

On the other hand, since completing our 5K program my darling husband – who has pretty much stayed true to his ‘never running again’ mantra for the past month – decided on Tuesday that he wants to do the 10K as well. I have no doubt that he will do fabulously despite the fact that he hasn’t rounded a track since the beginning of April. Hmmm… maybe next time I should just try his approach!

FOOD & BEVERAGES:
- 6 glasses of water
- 1 banana
- 9 inch wood-fired baguette with ham, brie, lettuce, apple and pear chutney, mayonnaise, and Dijon mustard
- 1 wood fired fruit custard tart
- 3 crab cakes
- 2 cups Caesar salad with shrimp, Parmesan cheese, and croutons
- 5 bites of a baguette
- 1 mug coconut steamed soy milk
- 1 gala apple
- 2 small Mandarin oranges

EXERCISE:
- 6 hours of walking around while sightseeing