Sunday, July 10, 2011

Training for New York City Marathon Week #1: Sunday's Long Run and Reflection

I've reached the end of the first week of Hal Higdon's Advance 1 Training Program and now I know what I need to work on. I've got to stick to the pace.

I hydrated well all day yesterday and had a baked potato for dinner, thanks to my dear Hubby. I was all carbed-up. I know I am ready for the 10-miler today. I decided to go from my house to Turri Road.  This is a popular spot for bikers and there is hardly any traffic.  I had the road to myself. Again the weather was much like yesterday at 54 degrees. The sun even peeked in the last half of my run, before the fog rolled in. I took my 2 bottle FuelBelt, and filled it with coconut water. Total of 16 ounces for hour and a half run and one packet of GU was perfect.
I was messing around with taking a shot of my shadow while running.
It's hard to do. Doesn't even look like me...

Even encountered some turkey vultures...something didn't smell right.
Didn't even budge when I rolled in...

Relief...flat!
Started feeling the incline...


The rolling hills await me: Bring it on!


See, no one out here, the whole road is mine.


The first mile is always easier to hold back, mostly because my body is just waking up and it is still cold and stiff. I walked for 2 blocks and then I started the Garmin. Lately, I've been trying to run without looking at my watch to see my pace. I am trying to learn the art of pacing by feel. I have the watch so that I can download my stats and analyze it later on, mainly to collect data. That was how I ran today, by feel. Turri Road has hills and curves therefore I knew it would definitely slow me down.
When I finished, my Garmin read 9:32 for the 10 miles. I was supposed to run it between 9:39 and 10:39, which was 30 to 90 seconds slower than my marathon pace of 9:09. So you can see that I've missed my mark, AGAIN! I am very dissappointed about this because I know it is way too early to form bad habits.  I am hoping that I haven't put the rest of my workouts in Week 2 in jeopardy.  By that I mean, I want to be able to put forth a good effort in completing the midweek workouts. I don't want to burn myself out by running the weekend long runs hard. That's how I worked it in the last few marathons and the reason I jumped on Hal's program is to see if it will make a difference. I had a hills today and I didn't hold back. Next week, the goal is to stick to the pace. Thanks to Heidi, she reminded me that we have a tool to help me with my pacing problem.  I can set up my Garmin to alert everytime I am going too slow or too fast. That way I can stay in the range. So much for my going by feel; I need the Garmin to help me right now. I'm going do a better job on Week #2.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Eileen- Don't be too hard on yourself!! I'm sure you will do great. I was reading your blog on your 2010 training and race day experience...found it very helpful. I'm also 4'11'!!! I'm 114 lb and trying to lose at least 10 lbs before race day!..but having a difficult time. Good luck on week #2. :))))

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  2. Thanks MMV. Hey! we're both 4'11", how about that! Good things comes in small packages! :-) Yes, I do need to chill out a bit. Once the training really gets going, I'll mellow out.
    ~Aileen

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