Trails and Jubilation: New River Training Week 1

Monday, March 4, 2013

New River Training Week 1

I have recently signed up to compete in my second ever road half marathon at the beginning of May. The New River Half Marathon in Todd, NC looks to be a fairly flat half and a PR course for me. My goal is to go sub 1:30, but I have a lot of work to do to make that happen. I will be chronicling my training over the next 10 weeks to see if I can capture another PR this year. To help achieve this goal, my speed work will consist of long downhill repeats, tempo runs, mountainous easy runs, and a bit more pavement than I'm used to. First week below:

Mon - off

Tues - 64min/ 7.5m/ 700' - Hickory City Park - 1.5m downhill repeats x2. Today I did my first speed session of downhill repeats. The greenway at HCP is 1.5 miles and loses 200' steadily during the last 1.2m. I feel that the workout went well and I ran the first repeat in 8:59 and the second in 8:56. 17 minute warm-up, recovery, and cool-down all on trails.

Wed - 78min/ 8.5m/ 2000' - SOMO - Nice run in SOMO today. The water was up, so I decided to run by the falls and it was well worth it. Took it pretty easy for the first half, then realized I had 40 minutes to run the last 4.5 miles before the park closed its gates. Ran pretty hard down Shiny Trail, HQ, and River trail to get back in 35 min. That was a little quicker than planned. Didn't mean to get two downhill workouts back to back. Well worth it though.

A lot of water today

Thurs - 48min/ 6.2m/ 600' - DART - Ran from Hannah's to meet the crew for the Wolf Spider loop. Took it easier over there and then Tommy wanted to run a bit harder than I did, but I stuck with him. Ran the loop in about 33 min. Good run, but too hard after the past two days.

Fri - off - felt a bit beat from the past 3 days.

Sat - 2hrs40min/ 18.5m/ 2000' - Tour de Lake Norman - Meet up with a bunch of great folks and friends to run around Lake Norman State Park. The pace was comfortable most of the day, but took the paved 1.5m section hard. Not sure of the exact split, but it was somewhere around 9min. This was a great run and we had a nice after party in the parking lot once everyone had finished including free drinks and guacamole. Thanks Don, Terri, and Craig for the munchies. This run is one that needs to be done again.

Tour de Lake Norman crew

Sun - 80min/ 7m/ 700' - Fisher Farm - Wow did I feel terrible on today's run. Seemed to have zero energy and ended up walking the last 1.5 miles. It was a recovery run anyway, but still. I guess I tried to put too much speed in one week.

Totals =

Time - 7hrs10min
Miles - 47.7
Vert - 6,000'

Felt fast all week, but started to feel run down by the end. Need to ease in a bit. Hopefully, I can fulfill the actual training plan this week. Feel about 1 hour short this week.

More pics from the tour....