Boston Week 1:

Training officially began on Monday with a hill workout. I dragged my cousin out to Desert Classic Trail at South Mountain for 6 miles of up and down. I love this trail for several reasons. It's challenging. If you don't watch where you are going you will end up on your ass. Or your face more likely. And the hills are steep, quick ups and downs. Very steep. And very quick. And relentless. I looked back in my training log and the last time I ran this trail I did 10 miles at a 12 minute pace. On Monday, we ran 6 miles at sub-10 minute pace. Mostly because I could hear my cousin, with his long loping stride, right on my heel. Barely breathing of course. Me, on the other hand, I was sucking wind and had to stop conversating in order to survive the last 4 miles. But I love these workouts because you feel like you've done something.

My next key run workout was Wednesday's tempo run. I warmed up with 2 miles, ran 2 at tempo pace, and cooled down the last two miles. Unfortunately, my Garmin battery died before I finished my first mile (oops, forgot to plug it in). But, as my Skirt Chaser says... with tempo it's not about the number, it's about the effort. So I just ran what felt like a 5k pace for the middle two miles. Being the first week, I'm not going to stress about it. Next week though. My Garmin will be up and running. (I'm addicted to stats.)

This morning was my third key run workout. Race pace. My Garmin has a cool little setting that allows me to dictate my high and low pace and then it will beep at me if I drop below my established pace. So I set my "training assistant" at 8:20... Boston pace. After my mile warm up, when I heard the little beep-beep-beep, I knew I was running too slowly. I LOVE this feature! No more looking down at my watch every 20 seconds to make sure I'm staying on track. Occasionally, my mind wandered and my watch beeped and I had to snap back to attention. But, I successfully ran 5 miles at an 8 minute pace. And each of the 5 miles was within 3 seconds: 7:59-8:02. Now that's spot on pacing. Obviously a little faster than the 8:20 I was targeting... but it's where I needed to be today.

Tomorrow: 3:1 run. 60 minutes easy/ 20 minutes race pace. Should be fun!