Games?

So the first week of training is already interesting. Saturday was a timed mile in addition to about 2 miles total of warm up and cool down. My time was 9:17 – not bad for me at all, but let’s keep this number in mind as the months go along because this is the “baseline” and it should improve from here – I hope, but I never really thought this could be! After our cool down Saturday morning were all handed schedules and forms to fill out our goals followed by an introduction from Josh, our coach, talking about the season, making goals, etc. Some of us had a 5K race at South Mountain the next day. I was one of them – didn’t do the best out there, but it was hot and since it was an out and back ½ of the race was uphill. We took it easy and were just happy to have gotten out there and finished the race, meet up with running friends, etc.

Monday - 25 min easy on my elliptical at home.

The schedule for Tuesday’s training showed “Games”. I’m thinking all day Monday and Tuesday…what does “Games” mean? Well, we found out.

The first game had to do with a couple of dollar bills. Someone says a random number between 1 and 30. Josh counts over across the serial numbers of one of the bills the number said, whatever digit was there is how many yard lines we had to run on the football field before switching between easy and hard running. The luck of it comes in when someone drops the dollars on to the field, they can drop as 0, 1 or 2. If the dollars both land face up it counts as 2 (even – start easy), one up one down as 1 (odd – start hard), both down as zero (I think this would be all hard, but we never had this drop thank goodness!). We wanted the even drop in most cases because if the digit was 8, it would be 8 yard lines easy, 8 yard lines hard, then the remaining 6 yard lines easy again. There are 22 yard lines to cross on the field. We would run from one end of the field to the other and do the dollar drop again so that each time across the field was different. Kind of fun, but man does the sprinting get you winded! We finished that one off with 5 easy, 5 hard all the way up the field and back on the last round.

Next, Josh pulls out his cell phone and pulls up the phone number for one of the people on our team. Someone now has to pick a number between 1 and 10 for the digits in the phone number to count over. Even was to start out easy, odd was to start out hard. Now this game we wanted odd – it had to do with the way the light poles around the track are laid out, we would switch between easy and hard at each light pole. Just so happened that the longer distances between poles were at the even changes. And this time, luck was not on our side – most of this trip around the track was hard running! Thankfully we only had to go around once for our first night out there on the track! I can’t imagine what it will be like when we build up! That was only about 1.25 mile total running but it is amazing how sore my legs were when using them in a different way for sprinting, etc.

Anyways, that is games for that evening. Wednesday night was another 25 min easy on my elliptical at home, but I sure didn't want to move the legs! LOL Tonight’s meet is listed as “4 x 3 min w/3 min rest”. Details to come later – going to change out into my running clothes now! :)

Needing Some More Motivation...and Getting It!

Just sharing my excitement with you ladies that I'm starting to train with a running club on Saturday morning! We meet at 7 different rotating locations around the valley on Saturday mornings (typically for long runs) and every Tuesday and Thursday at 7:00pm at the Scottsdale Community College track. I've known many people from the group for a couple of years now, but I always thought I lived too far away from SCC to make it worth while. This year I found out that a couple other coworkers that live just barely closer than I do are joining. Hearing that was all I needed to decide that I can do this too! I've been needing some more motivation and encouragement lately and what could be better than an entire group of fun runners?!

From what I hear we will be starting off this Saturday at the beginning - a timed mile. I've never really done this. I've always set out for more than a mile and I never thought to just try my best at a single mile. This gives a baseline to track your improvement. It will be at around 6:30am, so I hope I still do pretty well in the heat. I'm about to get used to it though - 7:00pm twice a week outside will do it! Lucky we don't have too much longer to deal with it.

Anyways, I'll keep all of you posted on how my training is going. I will start my training with those that are going for a full marathon. If I can keep up with the training without knee pain or injury I will continue and go for the PF Chang's full here in Phoenix. If not, I'll try to do a few half marathons along with relays. I'm just excited to get back to consistency here! If any of you are interested in joining, let me know and I'll get you the info. I paid $150 total for 6 months of training - not bad for all you get! Web site isn't completely up to date, but here it is if you are curious: http://www.iknowaguyracing.com