First official day of training

With a 10K a month away, I decided it was time to ramp up the training.  Right now I'm currently stuck in a 3 mile plateau.  I would probably be farther along if not for my injury.

Ah, yes, the "injury."  Back in early October of last year, I ran in my first 5K.  It was lots of fun, a Halloween one, except that parts of the path were created using rocks.  At one point during the race, I slipped and developed a minor case of plantar fasciitis.  I continued to run on it, no problems.  But in the middle of November, I took a vacation to Florida.  One of the days of the vacation, I went on a long walk wearing flip flops.  The flip flop straps caused blisters, which in turn caused me to overcompensate my walking.  Near the end of my walk, my right ankle hurt so bad I could barely walk back.  When I returned home, I resumed my training, as I had yet another 5K coming up.  I ran the 5K and had more pain in my ankle; however, it went away later that day.  A few days later I went for another 3 mile run when the pain came back.  This time the pain lasted several days.  After consulting with several follow runners, I saw my doctor.  My doctor recommended a foot doctor.  After x-rays were negative, I was diagnosed with overpronation.  I would need custom orthodics in order to continue my running.  While waiting for my orthodics, I was ordered to only run 1 to 2 miles until they were ready.

My orthodics finally arrived in mid-January.  But thanks to my strict 1-2 miles only, I had fallen behind in my training.  Had I not been injured, I'd probably be running 4-5 miles regularly.  I resumed Couch-to-5K to get me ready for the Super 5K I had on Super Bowl Sunday.  But now, with my first 10K a month away, I knew it was time to begin pushing myself farther.

I seem to be averaging around 12 to 12:45 minutes per mile.  But when I do my races, I've actually run an 11 minute mile and a 11:24 minute mile.  So I know I can do better, but I think I need other people with me to push me.  For now, I'd like to continue my training about a 12 to 12:30 pace, unless I'm doing tempo runs, then I will drop my pace to 11:30.  Ideally for the half, I'd like to be on a 11:30 minute per mile pace so that I can finish it comfortably and also leave myself some room to walk and enjoy the scenes (I'll be crossing the USA-Canada border twice!)
I decided I would work on a 2-to-1 run/walk ratio.  Today I did two sets of 3 minutes of running, followed by 1:30 minutes of walking, followed by 5 minutes of running, followed by 2:30 minutes of walking.  I maintained an average pace of 13:46 minutes per mile.  I ran 1.31 miles out of a total of 2.29 miles for a pace of 12:15 minutes per mile.  On Saturday, I plan to do 4 miles using the 2-to-1 ratio.  I will be running indoors at a gym on a treadmill, so I may have to do some adjusting.  I usually prefer to run outside, but I'm meeting my friend to run.  The one plus side to running a treadmill is that I can control the pace and make sure I'm maintaining the pace.  Sometimes when I run outside, my pace starts to vary or even worse, I start out fast and end up gassed at the end of my runs.  The disadvantage to the treadmill is that they aren't always accurate, and they don't account for all the "elements" you encounter at a race, such as uneven pavement, hills, wind, etc.

I'm sure at some point, I will pick a real training plan, most likely Jeff Galloway's plan, to get myself fully prepared for the half marathon.  But for now, I'm working on what works best for me.  And this is why I'm keeping this, so I can look back see if this is actually what works best for me, or if I should go with a more guided program.  We shall see!