So it begins

After achieving my goal of the running a sub-5 minute mile, several people have asked what I'll be doing next. Should I keep trying to get faster? Could I do 4:50? I don't know. I'd really like to try, but I think that will wait till next summer. I have really been looking forward to training for another marathon. So that's what I've been up to this week. I'm going to follow the FIRST plan and aim to qualify for Boston again. The Running from an Angel Marathon is in 16 weeks (as of last Monday), so this week was week 1. This is how it went:

Tuesday - On the schedule was 3x1 mile repeats at 6:01 pace with 1 minute recovery. Bring it on! I just trained for and ran a 5 minute mile. Three at a 6 minute pace should be cake. First mile... Oops, wrong turn (I was running through the neighborhood). It only took me 3:47, but that turned out to be a 5:30 pace. See, what did I tell ya? Mile two... One minute sure is short! No problem though. Managed to do a full mile this time in 6:02. Whoa, that was harder than I thought. Mile three... That minute seemed even shorter, and the mile felt even longer. I was only able to run a 6:12. How 'bout a nice recovery meal of humble pie?

Thursday - 2 miles easy, 2 tempo miles at 6:34 pace, 2 miles easy. If this run would have been before Tuesday's run, I'd probably have done those easy miles around 7 minutes each, but as I now have a better idea of how different marathon training is compared to mile training, I was sure to do those easy miles really easy. That turned out to be 8:20 for the first two. I was feeling pretty good when the tempo miles started, but knew it was going to be tough. The first mile was just a few seconds slow, but I made up for that on the second and finished 13 seconds ahead of schedule. Then, the last two miles were again at an easy pace.

Saturday - 13 mile long run. No way was that going to happen. Come on, I'm just coming off of a summer of training for 1 mile. I thought I'd be able to do 7, maybe 8 at an easy pace. But, life happens, and I skipped the first long run of the training plan. Lani and I decided that we wanted to get out of the heat of Phoenix for a day, so we packed up the kids and dog and headed up to Flagstaff with my bro and his wife. We spent the day hiking around (most of the time with my youngest on my back). We had a great time in the 73 degree weather at Buffalo Park and the Arizona Snow Bowl. At the end of the day, I was very glad I didn't do that long run before we left. All that hiking with an almost 3-year-old left me pretty worn out and sore. Hopefully, I'll get my long run in this weekend. Here are some pics of our adventure.