joncj5's Friends

Well, figured I've been posting in a number of places anyway, and may have some people curious about what I'm up to... If nothing else, you can read this and cure your insomnia...

So way back at the end of September, I was asking questions in another forum, and one of the people responding offered to coach me to run a half marathon.  Now, he lives half the country away, so it's a virtual coaching job, but just having someone draw up a training plan and answer my questions was a HUGE break for me.  He's coached numerous university athletes as well, and usually gets a reasonable chunk of money for doing it, so I'm really grateful.

The first step in my training was to run an test run.  It was a 12 minute run on a track to see how far you can run in that time.  Then he took that result and calculated my most effective training time.  He also used my current weekly mileage to calculate a starting point for how far I should be running.

Turns out I was running too fast for my training runs.  I was running 35 km/week at the time, and 4 times a week.  As of this week, I'm up to 6 days a week and 66 km, which feels like a pretty big difference. :)  But because I'm running slower, it's been doable.  My schedule calls for 300 km in December, compared to 125 in September, 166 in October, and 250 in November.

Apparently, in mid-January, my training program switches from "base mileage" building to more focused "performance" building (i.e. getting faster).  I've already been getting faster during the races I ran in October, and the 12 minute test run I repeated in November, but that's just because of the miles I've been putting in.  Next week, I do another test run, and that will be used to calculate a number of things, including my targets for my half marathon in May (which determines my training paces).  I'm curious and scared at the same time, because the better I do on my test, the more aggressive the training program will be between January to May.  But that's kind of the whole point... The scary part is that my coach has said that sometime in the new year, I will regret ever asking him to help me.  So I know I'm going to be challenged.

As far as counting calories go, I'm not anymore.  Actually, I haven't been since about mid September.  I've gone to an "instinctive" diet program, which to me means I eat a comfortable amount of whatever I like, but still focusing on eating healthy.  I even have the occasional donut or cookie or piece of pie, too! :)  So far, I've maintained my weight +/- about 2 pounds since mid-September, and often I'm under my target weight of 165 pounds.  I have noticed my body fat percentage continuing to drop slowly.  Still no 6-pack abs or anything, but that could be as much a lack of targeted exercise too.  It likely helps that I'm burning about 5000 calories per week in 6+ hours of running. :)

Anyway, it seems that I have no life besides working and running.  We've been blessed with unseasonably good weather up till now, but next week it looks like it might change for the worse.  Like highs of -20, and lows near -30.  That's sounding like treadmill weather to me! :)  So far, my chilliest run has been about -15, and that was fairly un-fun.  I need to ramp up my clothing selection to handle that.  The lack of daylight isn't as big of a deal, although the temps drop rapidly when the sun goes down.  We're seeing sunrise at 8:30, and sunset at 4:15.  On the plus side, that will basically be the worst we see, and it will start getting better after Christmas.

Well, hope everyone else is doing ok, and looking forward to Christmas!  This will be my first "healthy" Christmas, but I survived Thanksgiving, so I'm not too concerned about this holiday.

Clint