LiveWire Run Club 6/28

I promise I haven't forgotten this blog but I was out of town the past two weekends and so I didn't get any chances to run.

With that in mind, I was a little worried about how this morning's long run was going to go.  I ran an average pace of 10:09/mi which is faster than what it felt like.  My feet felt heavy for much of the run.  The weather was cloudy but it was very humid with temps in the high 70s.  I force myself to run slower because I am very concerned about overheating since I don't always handle the heat well.

With the summer heat I like to focus less on my speed and try to work more on my form and whatnot.  This morning we ran some hill repeats and so I worked on trying to bound up the hill with good form.  Going uphill you should run up on the balls of your feet, which actually puts more spring in your step.  Going downhill you should lean forward, shorten your stride a little, increase your cadence some, and let the hill pull you down the road/trail/sidewalk.

For more regular terrain I just try to focus on my stride, strike, and cadence.  I want to really maintain a steady cadence and shorten/lengthen my stride as needed.  The thing about lengthening my stride too much is I need to increase my turnover otherwise my cadence has to slow down.  Thankfully in my LiveWire Adrenaline class that is one of things were we focused on this week.

Finally, I set a goal for the year several weeks ago to run 500 miles this year.  As of this blog entry I have logged 345 out of 500 miles, which puts me at 69% complete.  I feel this is very doable especially since I have half marathon races in August, September, October, November, and December which means, barring injury or illness, I have about 66 more guaranteed miles which would put me at around 410 miles.

I'm going to try to run on the 4th since I won't have a chance to run the next two weekends.

LiveWire Run Club 6/7

Today was (what I consider) my first real run since my marathon.  I've run smaller distances like 3 or 4 miles but today was my first "long" run I've done in several weeks.  It felt great, especially since I got to run with people.  It sounds weird but during much of my marathon training I was running solo.  The group I ran with all run at about my pace so they helped push me and I helped them push the pace.

Now that I am finished training for my marathon I want to change gears towards finishing a half marathon in under 2 hours.  To do that, I figure I need to average better than 9:15/mile.  This morning I ran a 9:28/mile average and that was even with our group running slower to allow for someone to catch up.

It was warm this morning but the heat didn't bother me too much since I've been doing cross training in the evenings where the temps have been in the 90s lately.  Running in this heat should help me with the Hottest Half in August.  Last year I really seemed to struggle and I'd like to see if I can do better this time around.

I'm excited about my slate of races coming up.  I have a race in the months of August, September, October, November, and December.  I've been training in a speed class lately called Adrenaline offered by LiveWire Fitness.  I've learned some cool techniques like bounding on hills which I feel is helping me become a better runner.  Here's a good article that gives five different techniques to make you a better runner, especially when trying to conquer a hill.

I am going to work on my account of the Mountains2Beach Marathon this weekend.  I've been extremely busy since I ran the race and haven't had time to sit down and write down everything about the race.  I'll try my best to get it done tomorrow morning.