Marathon Plan: Week 1 Postmortem

After a little over a week, everything is happening exactly like I expected it to. I guess in my old age I'm getting good at figuring out how I think.

The short distance has been both a blessing and a curse. It's been a blessing because running conditions are generally bad: it's cold, there's snow all over the sidewalks, and it gets dark early. Keeping the runs short keeps me from making excuses from running. "It's just 10 minutes" I tell myself. And I change into my Vibram Five Fingers, put on a running jacket and some pants, and I do it.

I'm hoping that doing all of these early short runs now will create a habit of running for me, which will be important when I'm running longer distances.

Of course, the short distance has also been a curse. Just yesterday I had to consciously stop myself from running when I hit my set distance. I really wanted to keep going. Especially since if I don't plan out the run appropriately, I can have a long walk home. It's also frustrating getting all dressed up to go running, and then going for such a short distance. My warm-up (5 min) is longer than my actual run.

I've been using RunKeeper to track my runs. It's a great free app (for iPhone and Android) that is perfect for running. You can even use an optional Bluetooth heart rate sensor. And of course, after each run, all of the information (distance, pace, heart rate, elevation) is beamed to the internet where it is overlaid onto Google Maps and you can see exactly what your pace/elevation/heart rate was at any point along your run. It then takes the information for every run you've done and gives you the aggregate and trend information. Very cool nerdy stuff.

I've set up RunKeeper to give me 5 minutes of brisk walking for my warmup, at which point it notifies me that the next segment of my workout should begin. I have that section set to a distance, which is what I am running for that particular week. After it announces (only a couple of minutes later) that I have reached my desired distance, I immediately stop running and start walking home.

Of course, it tracks all of my information for the warm up and cool down sections, which makes it look like I am running longer distances than I actually am, but on the website it gives the option split out the results for each section. Again, a very good utility for this exact sort of thing.