Day One of Lansing Marathon training kicked off today!  Yipee!  Love, love, love starting a new training cycle.  This will be a 17 week training plan for me, because I’m training with the group that is going to Boston and they started their 16 week training plan today.

So, the kick-off workout, with the group, ended up being 8.25 miles.  Warm up easy for 15 minutes, then 6 x 6060’s (huh?), then easy miles, then 2 x 6060’s (huh?), then easy til the end.  What is a 6060, you ask?  (I did too, I’ve never done these with coach before).  It’s a new thing he’s trying.  60 seconds at faster than 5k, with 60 seconds active recovery (about 90 seconds slower than the faster than 5k pace).  The point of them was to be able to recover sufficiently during the active recovery part to still be able to do the 60 seconds at the same just-under 5k pace.  When Coach MB said what the workout would be, truthfully I was a little disappointed.  I thought, “I came all the way here for a group workout and all we’re doing is a few 60 second bursts of speed?”  As usual, I underestimated the workout.  By the 4th 60 second speed burst, I was spent.  Numbers 5 and 6 were tough for me.  It also didn’t help that some of these were up gradual hills.  And, when we got to the other 2 60 second bursts, they were directly into the crazy (20 mph) wind.  SO – it was a great workout.  I know it was more difficult for me than the rest of the group because there were only 5 of us there today (b/c people are still on vacation) and the ones that were there are all ultra speedy.  So, when we were doing our “easy” warm up miles and the “easy” miles after the speed bursts, those miles were at what is basically just a touch slower than my marathon pace.  Ended up with 8.25 miles in 1:06:23 (8:04 pace avg.)

I love kicking off the training week with a decent workout.  One thing that I always disliked about the Pfitz plans I followed was starting the week with a rest day.  Seemed odd (and, of course, I never did that; I mixed things up b/c it would bug me too much otherwise).  So, in general the next 17 training weeks will look like this:

• Mondays:  speed days with group (alternating tempo, intervals and things like the 6060’s)
• Tuesdays:  rest or cross/strength on our own
• Wednesday:  hills with group (remember, I’m training with the Boston peeps, even though I won’t need much hill work for Lansing, it will be a great strength builder!)
• Thursday:  7 – 9 mile maintenance pace run on own
• Friday:  rest or cross/strength on own
• Saturday:   long run w/ group
• Sunday:  recovery run on own

In other exciting news, I managed to do planks 6 of the 7 days last week, working my way up to TWO 60 second planks, and 1- 30 second side plan on each side.  Goal by the end of this week:  3 – 60 second planks and 2 – 30 second side planks.  Baby steps.

I am SO excited to be starting training.  I need the distraction from life issues, the focus and the endorphin therapy.  Only 117 days til race day!