beginning the count down

I am starting on the official training regimen for this years' big race - the covered bridge 1/2 marathon in June.
Despite this weeks many obstacles - my freakin' toe still hurts! and I have had a minor break up with my running partner, which hopefully will blow over quickly, I am off to a strong start training wise.
Early Sunday morning, after deciding that it was a perfect skip church day, I ran with Lee. As planned we ran the first 3.5 miles together, and I kept up a pretty good pace (10:30ish). I was not able to talk much, mostly I just acknowledged his comments with a nod or a grunt. Still, someday I would love to be able to really run together, so this was little run was really great.

Lee kept going, he would end up doing nearly 18 miles on Sunday - gulp! I turned back and finished my run at 7.8 miles at a 11 min/mile pace - good. Even better than getting through the long run, was that I was not completely beat for the rest of the day. I did do some stretching and I used the roll-bar massage when I got home, which really felt good. I stretched out on the couch for an hour.. but I also got up and cleaned the garage and did laundry.

I am following a different training method this time, which has me running only 3 times a week and cross training 2 times (my swim class).
Sunday went so well, that I will keep to the schedule and try not to worry that I am not running "enough", quality over quantity, or something like that.

It is so hard to figure out when and where to run each week. I spend over an hour total throughout the week looking at my calendar and trying to find the time to squeeze in some exercise.

Today is typical of a winter running day. It snowed and sleeted yesterday, so the sidewalks are not safe. I am thinking I will run during Teddy's piano lesson, there is a nice 3 mile loop around the school. I just have to be ready to run in the street, where there is very little shoulder along the side of the road to run in.

I will be happy to see all the snow gone for good!

Training schedule begins!

yikes, it is hard to think about training outside on a day like today, it snowed 10 inches of snow last night!

Today might be a good day to make friends with the treadmill. I haven't tried to run inside since I hurt my toe, and even before that I wasn't very happy at treadmill running, but on a day like today there is really no choice.