Ahhh! So this post is slightly delayed. I apologize. Starting training again has been a little overwhelming, and it’s the holidays. A girl can only do so much! Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve been so lazy lately. It’s winter break. Sue me!
Sunday (12/22/13): The inaugural training run! It was a nice and easy 3 miles. I hit the treadmill, since it was pretty cold out. I started at 6.5 mph for the first 1.5 miles, ran 7.0 mph for the next 1 mile, and then finished the run at 7.5 mph for the last .5 miles. I couldn’t tell you the time, but it was a decent run for the first day of training.
Monday (12/23/13): Monday was the first hill run of training. Needless to say, I appreciate these so much more after my hilly Route 66 Marathon. For hill runs, you run about 400 m at an incline for each repetition. I usually do my hill runs on the treadmill. I run each rep at a certain speed and incline, then decrease the incline and increase the speed for 400 m between each rep. For this one, I ran my hills at 6.5 mph at 3.0% incline then ran my breaks at 7.0 mph at 0.0% incline. I was a little sore, since I haven’t done hill runs in forever, but it felt good to get back into the swing of things.
Tuesday (12/24/13): I went home for the holidays, and it’s not the most ideal place to get in a run, especially not in the winter. I chose to take Christmas Eve off.
Wednesday (12/25/13): Oh. I also took off Christmas. Oops! I ate so much food to make up for the lack of exercise, too!
Thursday (12/26/13): Thursday will generally be a rest day, but since I rested on Christmas and Christmas Eve, I got back to my apartment and did a cardio dance workout on the Xbox. It was actually a pretty intense workout and really got me sweating.
Friday (12/27/13): First pace run! Woo! Hit the treadmill again for a decent 5 mile pace run. Finished in 45:10, which is somewhere between 6.6 and 6.7 mph, which will get us to about a 4:00:00 marathon. Unfortunately, the top of my foot was feeling a lot of pressure from my Sunday and Monday runs. I wore my Newtons both days, which I haven’t used in ages. My usually comfortable Asics were even giving me pains.
Saturday (12/28/13): Still feeling the foot pain from those first two runs, I hit the treadmill for a 10 mile long run. (Treadmill runs are going to be very common during these next couple weeks. I don’t handle cold well. That Route 66 marathon did not help with my hatred for the cold either.) I was okay the first couple of miles, but I ended the run with some very awkward form to try to comfort that sharp pain on the top of my foot. I ran at a 6.0 mph pace the whole time and finished in 1:40:00. Minus the pain, it was a pretty good run. The run felt easy and would have been even easier if I didn’t have to baby that injured foot. We’ll have to wait and see how that treats me in the next couple weeks.
Stay tuned! As always, question and comment to your heart’s desire!
Below is a screenshot of my full December training schedule.
The Road to 26.2 
My heart desired to comment! …so… here you go. 🙂