Maybe with a tweak....

I did my run yesterday on a treadmill. It was too cold outside for me! I like it mid-40's or better. It was just barely 40. Where did spring go?! Not a bad run. Seems like I am destined to do 13:00-ish miles forever. I can do one mile in 11:00, it's that second one that kills me. So, for the second time in a row, my 30 minute run was 2.25 miles. Well, 2.26 this time, but really? Tenth of a mile is a notable increase, not a hundredth. Although, if I keep tacking on one hundredth, I will eventually get to a tenth. Haha! Oh man. Such a long journey. But at least one of those two runs was outside and the other on the treadmill, so I am consistent. That part is good to know, especially since there are hills and weather outside, but I want to get faster.

In two weeks, I am running the Hello Cupcake! 5k. I really want to beat my last 5k time of 41:23 which was a 13:21 pace. In order to increase speed, it seems that the general consensus on the interwebz is intervals and cross/strength training. I already have a plan in place for strength training, I can add in a cross training day easy peasy. It comes down to intervals.

So I have come up with a plan... a plan that just hatched in my head about 15 minutes ago, actually. I am going to go back to the last interval plan on the c25k, run eight mins and walk five twice. I think I am going to tweak it a bit and do it once a week. I'll aim at run eight minutes and walk for four for three reps. It will be treadmill work, which should not be an issue since I think a lot of running this week will be on the treadmill due to time constraint - work gets in the way of all of my fun. I usually run at 5mph with a couple walk breaks. I am going to go at 5.5mph for intervals this week. If it goes well, I might bump it up a tad.

One thing I am a bit worried about is over training. I already have a bit of soreness, and I know that I have bad hips and feet (genetics are awesome) and I know that one of the things new athletes do is push it too hard. The internet is stuffed with stories of people that hurt themselves by hitting something too gung-ho and while I want to work hard at this, I don't want to injure myself and have to stop. I've made some pretty good headway into this and I don't want to mess it up. I think I should be ok, though. I am not increasing my mileage anytime soon. Staying here and working on this 5k thing for a while. I'll up the distance later, once I can do three comfortably.

Training for the Week:
Mon - Long run: 3 miles
Tues - Core Work
Wed - Intervals
Thurs - Total Body Work
Fri - Run 30 Minutes
Sat - Bike
Sun - Rest
Might switch up the last three days a bit depending on how sore I am after total body... last week it killed me for three days.