See Diva Run

Woohoo, it’s day 3 of the new year and day 2 of the FIRST plan. Tonight I ran my first tempo run. The plan called for a 2 mile warm up, 2 at tempo pace and a 2 mile cool down. They say that tempo pace should be “comfortably hard”. I think my tempo run qualified. I got a wicked side stitch about a quarter mile from the end, and then it became uncomfortably hard. I had to walk it off for a couple of minutes before the cool down run.

On the cross training front, I had a great rowing workout yesterday, and I’ve also been doing some balance training.

As for eating enough, that is always a challenge. I did manage to limit myself to 2 pieces of pizza at dinner both last night and tonight. I had a salad for lunch, so maybe I’m making progress. I checked my running log from 2007, and I started 2008 5 pounds lighter, so at least I have that going for me.

I haven’t tossed out any stuff yet, but I haven’t bought any, either. Considering the amount of stuff I acquired in December, not buying stuff should be easy for a couple of weeks. I should really get busy with tossing out the stuff, because according to this NY Times article, stuff could be making me fat and unhealthy. According to the article, one woman cleaned up her house and lost 50 pounds. Her house must have been even messier than mine!

After a two week break from running, today was my first day on the FIRST (Furman Institute of Running & Scientific Training) marathon training plan. Starting the FIRST plan on the first day of the first month of the year is pretty darn nerdy, isn’t it? Oh well, what do you expect from a Database Diva? Since I’ve had some time off, and I don’t have a target race in mind, I’m starting out by following the FIRST first marathon plan, with a target pace of 9:00. Later, when I have a race in mind, I may switch to their half marathon plan, as I think running a half marathon at a 9:00 pace is more attainable than a full marathon right now. Once I’ve run a half marathon at that pace, a marathon might seem more feasible.

The Furman plans focus on quality runs and cross-training to prevent injury. The recommended training schedule is an interval run on Tuesday, a tempo run on Thursday and a distance run at a pace that is 30 seconds slower than the planned marathon pace on Saturday. With 1/1 being a Tuesday, and me being a resolution fan, you can see why starting today was a must. My first FIRST (sorry, I’ll stop soon) interval workout should have been a 10 minute warm up, followed by six one minute intervals at 7:30 with a three minute recovery jog in between. Since I had never run intervals before, it took me a while to find the right recovery pace, so I ended up running 4 minutes of recovery per interval instead of 3. I will repeat this workout next Tuesday, but with a 3 minute rest, instead. Tomorrow I’ll cross-train with 40 minutes of rowing. Thursday I’ll have a go at my first FIRST tempo run!

Every diva knows that the key to success is the right pair of shoes. For my FIRST attempt at intervals I chose my Nike Zoom RS. They are super light and flexible. Perfect for running fast but not far!

So to review, I ran my very first interval workout as the first run of the FIRST first marathon plan on the first day of the first month of the year. Yeah, that is pretty nerdy alright!