running / fitness / etc

January 5, 2017

1) As I mentioned in a prior post, I decided to hire a running coach.  I selected rather randomly (for price + types of plans offered) Run Your Personal Best.  The plan I am doing is $70/month.  I have no idea if it is going to make me faster, but I love the idea of someone else planning out my paces + giving me assignments.

2) I remain stuck in a speed plateau.  Being sick did not help nor does the fact that I have had maybe 3 TOTAL runs where the temp was 70F or below this year.  (We have had a complete and total non-winter thus far — even by Miami Beach standards).  Today I ran 4 miles at 9:36/mi average and it didn’t feel particularly easy.

3) I discontinued my barre3 membership because I felt like a break.  I really did enjoy barre3 and felt it gave me some benefit in terms of muscle tone, but it definitely did NOT help my running.  I plan on going back to it someday.

4) Or maybe I’ll try Kayla Itsines workouts this summer when I’m completely DONE with trying to run in the heat.  I am not sure I am up for the torture, though.

5) I seem to have gotten back to my ‘happy weight’ after all my prior whining, so that’s nice.  I think it was mostly because I was sick but I’ll take it.

6) I ran 877.8 miles in 2016 (and 847.1 mi in 2015).  I guess I’m consistent if nothing else.

7) One might point out that it doesn’t matter how fast I run.  But it matters to me.  I really like trying to get faster and having race goals to work towards.   I hope I can do it until I’m really, really old.

3 Comments

  • Reply Chelsea March 10, 2019 at 7:09 pm

    I’ll be curious to hear about your experience with the coaching program. I have used coaches before and felt like it was very helpful for the same reasons you’ve listed. It’s funny because you can kind of get the same things from a training plan, but you have to expend the mental energy deciding between training plans (some of which are very different). Right now I’m doing coaching from McMillan running, which is pretty expensive (though cheaper than the list price on the website now because I renewed my contract from last year) but it has been great. I feel like my coach has gotten to "know" me and has hit the perfect balance with my training. I’m not super fast, but I have run lifetime PRs in the 5k and 10k since Will was born and am expecting to run a PR in the marathon at the end of the month (my current marathon PR is pretty slow so hopefully it shouldn’t be too difficult).

    I think training in the heat is definitely a factor in your slower times. I remember feeling totally awful both summers I’ve run here and tremendously better and faster once it cooled off a bit. Maybe you could think about a destination race somewhere cooler? Adaptation to running in the FL heat could be your super power (as I very fast friend has said to me).

    • Reply theSHUbox March 10, 2019 at 7:09 pm

      oh so cool! I will keep McMillan in mind for the future as well.

      The heat is absolutely a factor – did a lovely long run today in SUB-60 temps along the beach and it was amaaaaazing. Destination races are not something I’ve thought about but maybe as the kids get older I’ll have to go to some cold place (NC in the winter!?) to try to do better than I will likely run here. I was soooo lucky the last 2 times I ran the Miami Half and it was even cooler than ti was today.

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