Go, Kim. Go!

Since I'm quite the unconventional girl, I am not using any structured or guided training program for my running (oh and cuz I'm stubborn). This means I'm relatively clueless when it comes to the whole building distance vs. building endurance vs. building speed issues that I'm facing in my journey towards MY MARATHON TRAINING. Did you catch that last bit? I've changed it from half marathon training to full marathon training. I feel I have the drive, the strength, and the heart to do the full, so I'm going to go for it (in January 2011). In the meanwhile, I have the Rodeo Run 5K on tap for Feb. 27th, the Bayou City Classic 10K on tap for March 13th, and then supposedly Tomball is going to have a 5K/10K race on April 10th that I would like to do. After that, I'm probably going to be raceless until the Houston Half Marathon on Oct. 24th.

So, back to the building distance vs. endurance vs. speed issue I'm facing...I spoke to Meliska and Greggy-D about it the other night and they both agreed that since I'm already doing 5 miles and I have time on my side, it would be best to work on building endurance for the time being. This meant experimenting with changing my 3 minute run / 1 minute walk routine to a 4 minute run / 1 minute walk routine during my Saturday run. I did really well for the first 2 1/2 miles. The next 1 1/2 miles, I noticed a slow fade. By the time I finished the 4th mile, I was toast...worse than that, burnt toast. I really didn't feel like I had much left to give. I walked most of the remaining mile, leaving myself quite disappointed. I know I'm probably not being very fair to myself, it was my first time with that timing structure and I also did not properly hydrate myself, having not carried any water with me and not having stopped to get a drink either.

The good news is that I made it 4 miles and that Saturday's race is 3.1, so I can utilize this time structure for the race. I'm really excited about this because when I did the Rocket's Run on January 31st, my first 5K EVER, I didn't have any kind of structure to my run, so now that I have experience and structure, setting a PR should be a natural progression!