What? I’ve been running…

Hey, long time no write! What’s up?

Well. I am proud to say that I did indeed take some time off of running after the Kepler race like I said I would. I ended up taking about a month off of absolutely no running! I knew I could do it, as I could physically and mentally feel like I needed a break. During that time, I didn’t miss it. In place of specifically running, I did walked, hiked, biked, did some weight training and I’ve totally gotten into doing push-ups! I think I started when I was still in New Zealand. I have been practicing almost daily. I have been doing 2-3 sets of 10 regular push-ups and I totally feel my strength gain. It’s pretty darn cool, I’ll tell ya! My goal is to get up to 5 sets of 10. I’m not sure I really need to do more than that, do I? It’s fun, different, and like I said, I love that I can see/feel my results. Some days, I tack on tricep dips and I will always work in some core work. Honestly, that is my LEAST favorite exercise of all: core work, and of course, it’s the area I would like to see improvement, but am not 100% motivated here. So, I do some, slack off, do some, etc…
When I wasn’t running, for the first few weeks, I also didn’t look at/read anything running related. No blogs, no articles, no magazines….I just took a full break and it was all good.
Since, January 1, I got back on the horse and ran pretty steady all week. I’ve been studying some different training plans, etc to get ideas on how I can improve my speed. One of the things I know that has held me back with improving my speed is that I have not incorporated enough variation in my training. I run at the same speed too much and don’t incorporate enough hills, intervals, etc. This is not NEW news to me, but I am now making a concerted effort to tackle this. Why? Because I wanna be faster. Just for me. For my own self fulfullment.
I have not yet picked any races to do in 2014, I have just been kinda focusing on the variations, mixing it up, seeing what works for me, etc…
I had tried to get in to the Nike Women’s Half-Marathon in DC in the spring, but was not selected via lottery. Bummed. That would have been a fun trip!

It’s interesting with the varied workouts I have been doing….I found that I have gone from running every run too slow to now almost running them all too fast. I wear a heart rate monitor for all runs now so I can see this clearly in my heart rate, pace, etc. So, it’s a process.

One of the resources I am using is this book I’ve had for quite some time; 

There’s A LOT of detailed information in this book and I’m sifting my way through it.

Total miles for January = Approx 68 miles
Mix of hill repeats, progression runs, easy runs, speed work

Looking forward to February and getting faster!

Cheers!