Las Vegas Marathon Training: Week 1

The countdown to the Las Vegas Marathon and 1/2 Marathon has begun. For the next 12 weeks I’m back in training mode for what will be my 4th 1/2 marathon. My third will actually happen week 7 of training. Once again I’ve decided to follow the Nike training because it has worked so well in the past for me. But I’ve also decided this time I am going to eat healthier to see if maybe, just maybe I drop about 5lbs (or more) during the training process. Nike has me running on average of 4 days a week, I am doing the “intermediate” training level so a normal week of training has me doing interval running on Tuesdays 6-7 miles on average, Wednesday is a short recovery run of 2-3 miles and Thursdays is hill work and pace runs of 7-8 miles then Saturday is the long run starting at 8 miles and building to my longest run of 15 miles before the tapper down. I’m still working on  my Body Combat certification so I am probably going to cut out the Wednesday short run until I finish my certification (which will hopefully be at the end of September if all goes according to plan).

Today I took to Springdale for my interval runs and averaged a pretty good pace for day 1 at about a 9:15! I did a 2 mile warm up, then 4×800′s at tempo followed by 4×200′s at fast with 1-3 minutes of easy running in between each interval. By the time I was finished I only had a quarter mile to go so I used that plus another quarter as my cool down. The temps have cooled down so that could have been part of the great run but my fingers were cold, I hate running with cold hands. Of course it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a minor hiccup. Yesterday I tangoed with my dogs kennel and end up with a gash and badly bruised foot. I couldn’t wear my shoe as tight as I normally like but like any runner nothing short of death will hold me back. Here is my run on Garmin below.