Life gets in the way...again.

So I had signed up and put a deposit down on the Furman Running program (FIRST), but have since come to realize that with me not working and Miss N's fall preschool tuition bill staring us in the face and a good friend's wedding in Colorado that I REALLY want to go to, I just can't afford it. I'm super disappointed and could have probably asked my mom for help but really its a frivolous expense at the moment.

L and I talked about it and as a trade-off I'm going to sign up for a few longer distance races including 2 that require overnight stays, but not airfare, car rentals or asking my m-i-l to take Miss N for 4+ nights. All this will still total way less (even with entry fees, overnight trips, gas, tolls etc) than just the initial deposit on FIRST.

So what does all this mean?

You guessed it, a new training plan...

Rather than get all ambitious and block out my training through the Fall and the Army 10-Miler in late October (that's right, for a moment I almost skipped us right over Summer and into Fall with this plan), I decided to put together one plan at a time with an eye on a race in each grouping of time. The idea was to try to avoid overtraining and also have more time to ramp-up for a race and with the understanding a week or two of fudged workouts does not spell total disaster.

First up, the Newport 10K. It's a local race whose starting line I can walk to and a distance that not only have I not raced, but isn't impossible to train for in 13 weeks (am coming at it from almost NO running in December & January). I've had a rough few weeks, but I'll talk about that in another post - hopefully - nothing traumatic just super-stressful.

Anyway, Newport is also a race that probably a few women from my running group will end up going to - so I'll likely have company at the start line (if not for long because so many of them are so fast, which is fine because chasing them makes me faster...).

So...Training plan, part 1 (apolgies for formatting issues). I hope you'll note I'm really trying to make this one work as I've eased up on my expectations, I'm going slow and I've built in a recovery week behind the 10K. That's also the week that non-priorty registration opens for ATM - if I don't get in it changes Fall a little so I have time to prepare without trashing an entire training session.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Feb 13		1.5 run	30-60 walk	1.5 run	30-60 walk	1.5 run	30-60 walk
Feb 20	Yoga	1.75 run	30-60 walk	1.5 run	30-60 walk	1.75 run	30-60 walk
Feb 27	Yoga	2 run	30-60 walk	1.5 run + weights	30-60 walk	2 run	30-60 walk
Mar 5	Yoga	2.25 run +weights	30-60 walk	1.5 run + weights	30-60 walk	2.25 run	30-60 walk
Mar 12	Yoga	2.5 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk30-60 walk	2.50 run	30-60 walk
Mar 19	Yoga	2.75 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	2.75 run	30-60 walk
Mar 26	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	3 run	30-60 walk
Apr 2	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	3.5 run	30-60 walk
Apr 9	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	4 run	30-60 walk
Apr 16	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	4.5 run	30-60 walk
Apr 23	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	5 run	30-60 walk
Apr 30	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical	2 run + weights	30-60 walk	5.5 run	30-60 walk
May 7	Yoga	3 run + weights	Elliptical 30min	Rest	Rest	Newport 10K	Rest
May 14	Yoga	2 run easy	Walk	2 run easy	Walk	3 run easy	30-60 walk

Retrenching

So there's this scene in Persuasion that sets up the whole premise of book/movie wherein Sir Walter Elliot is made to pack it off to Bath and rent the family estate to an admiral for the sake of saving money. They call it retrenching...which is exactly what we're faced with here in Team Gold's household. I've been unemployed for longer than I expected, Bergen County hasn't paid me for work I did in 2009 and Himself's thesis keeps getting sent back for rewrites. This should be the last round of rewrites, but we won't see the financial benefit until the fall when the credits and degree are registered with his new contract.

Sigh...Retrenching sucks...

I've canceled the gym membership and am going it alone. I'm committing myself to running with the group on Saturdays and on my own 2 other days a week. The two days are easy to come by if I don't mind being the mom always showing up to school in running clothes. The problem is going to be cross training and how/where to do it.

Restart 2.0 or is that 3.0?

Ah...yeah...Well, summer happened and since Himself is a school teacher (and an art teacher at that) I really had two toddlers at home.  Plus an over training injury that would not heal.  Now I'm 17 days out from the ATM and wondering what is possessing me to still try and go through with it.

Stubbornness, I suppose.  But that's always been a problem of mine.  A weekend away with just my parents too.  No baby, no husband.  Guaranteed minimum of 2 hours of alone time, despite being surrounded by 15,000 other runners.

Here's what I'm hoping for.  Running slow.  Running the first 3 miles and see how I'm feeling, run the next mile and check-in with the body again...if we're OK run the next mile.  Then I'm switching to run walk on the 5:1 ratio.  The ultimate goal is to make the time cut off and not get rerouted.  I want to finish the whole 10.  That's all.  

So this week I've logged 20 miles - mostly cycling, some run/walking and one elliptical workout.  I'm resting tomorrow (casual walk 'round town while TDMN is at "On My Own"), run/walking on Saturday and doing my usual yoga on Sunday.

I really promise I'm back this time.