My Running Journal, 031010

Today’s run was a short one, 1.23 miles at an average pace of 9:04 min/mile. I woke up listening to the early morning traffic whizzing by the house on wet roads. Flexed my feet, and definitely felt my calf muscles twinge a little bit. Since I am trying to get in shape for a marathon that is still seven months off, and not cripple myself, today I took it easy.

Sort of. That 9:04 pace was actually skewed – the reason it is that slow is that it includes the first 30 seconds or so of my run, when I was walking and strapping everything down. Looking at the lap summary on mapmyrun, It looks like the first 20 or so seconds I was walking at a pace of about 30 min/mile, and then started running – and by the end of the first minute, I was moving at about an 8 min/mile pace, for an overall first mile average of 9:14. The last .23 miles I was moving at about a pace of 8:22 min/mile.

Still not very fast from a single mile perspective, but it is close to the pace that I will need to hold steady at if I plan on finishing the marathon in four hours or less. And this was a pace that I felt I was pushing on – I definitely had the energy to run faster and/or farther, but I really do need to give myself a little bit of a break for recovery. Today was supposed to be a 3 miler, but between the muscle pain and how cold it was this morning, I am sure I would have pulled something. This is the first single mile that I have tried to run as quickly as I could, and stay on cadence. Still 85 BPM.

Today is also day three of my semi-paleo diet. I’ve decided that it will be easiest in steps, even if that is a cop-out of sorts. Wheat and processed sugars are out, and so far I have been able to not eat wheat (hoorah, two whole days!), and I’ve minimized my processed sugars – I haven’t been adding any to my foods, but I did eat an energy bar yesterday, as well as there being sugar in the sauce that I put on the rapini in last night’s dinner. I also need to start taking my blood sugar, and develop a schedule for that. And of course tonight is a dumpling night, and I’ll probably eat a few dumplings with flour skins. But we’ll see.