strength training – Raising Little Seekers

Half-marathon training week 2 = done! This was also the week that I finished my 6-week hypertrophy strength training. (A form of strength training that requires heavy lifting and minimal reps.) My body is thankful to say “goodbye” to my monster weights for now, but I also can’t wait to pick them back up when this race is over. I just love heavy lifting! But now I get to focus on my runs while I do moderate strength training in between.

While this is the first half-marathon that I’ve actually signed up for, I have completed training programs for halfs in the past. All programs I’ve seen have a similar structure: endurance runs, intervals and progression runs, distance runs, and “recovery” runs. This has always been a bit of an oxymoron to me. For me, running is hard. Period. I don’t have great lung capacity, so I’m always breathless, no matter my pace. Whenever I hear, “nice, easy, conversational pace” I think, “ha! I can’t have a conversation at any pace!” So that’s what I’m working on. In the past, I’ve tried to continue improving my pace even on my recovery runs. Not this time. My goal is for these runs to really FEEL easier. 13.1 miles is a long way. I need to be able to run “easy” when I start to feel breathless or need to calm my heartbeat. Learning to recover in a run or jog is the goal for these next weeks. It won’t be easy as I’m running in the cold and my running route is filled with hills. I often hear that recovery runs should be as flat as possible but the reality for me is that it’s just not possible. But hopefully it makes me stronger in the end.

So here’s my question to all the seasoned runners out there: would you rather hit a hill during an interval (when you’re supposed to be going faster and really want to see that pace improvement) or on a recovery from an interval (when it’ll be harder to catch your breath because you’re running uphill)? Answer in the comments! I think about this question often on my runs. 🙂

It was a long week and a hard week for lots of reasons. Here are some snapshots and descriptions: 1-2) We went for a nice walk and picnic on the mild Tuesday we had! Anyone else anxious for real spring? Or summer?! 3) I’ve been working on improving my sourdough and experimenting with different recipes. My family’s favorite boule is the whole wheat and this one came our beautiful. 4) Thursday was the longest day with several sourdough orders (I run a humble cottage bakery from my home) and a million other things happening at once! 5) My youngest son, Logan, had his last gymnastics class and I took him to Coldstone Creamery to celebrate. 6) Our city currently has an art show for students happening at City Hall. My oldest, Abby, submitted a watercolor of a horse (it’s beautiful!) and we went to the opening reception Thursday evening. There are so many talented young artists in Leominster! The artwork will be on display for the next two weeks. 7) Hubby and I had a date night Friday where I finally got a Guinness on tap–I hadn’t had one since returning from Ireland a year ago! 8) And I tried out a new to me recipe for sourdough potato buns and they are our new favorite burger bun.

This week was my first week of training for the half marathon and I finished a little late! I told myself at the beginning of this that I wasn’t going to let weather become a factor in my training. I want to run in inclement weather, figuring it’ll only make me stronger for the race. But my “long run” this week came on Friday, when we had wind speeds up to 45 mph. I laid in bed listening to trees, wires, and our fence sway and bang in the wind and I thought, “No way. I may as well run in place! I probably won’t move at all if I go out there!” So instead of finishing on Friday, I took my final run of the week on Sunday morning. I don’t plan to train on Sundays in general, but it was nice that there were hardly any vehicles on the road.

Week one was a challenge. The temps were below freezing most of the mornings, making it hard to breathe well. I’m also training with a weighted vest, which I’ve never done before. I have 11 lbs of vest on while I run and that has added an additional breathing challenge. Why the weighted vest? My hope is to improve my strength, bone density, core, and give myself an improved race time by running the actual race without it. My pace is much slower than I’m used to with the vest and probably also due to the cold. It’s hard to be efficient when your body is fighting the elements. I keep my spirits high by reminding myself that the worse I start out, the more improvement I should see over the next nine weeks. (Right?!)

This week I have 30 minute progression run, a 20 minute recovery run (the last of the 20 minute runs for the rest of the training), and two 45 minute runs: an interval and an endurance run. Last week my goal was to just get through the cold and finish the runs. This week I would like to see small improvements in my time and endurance. And if not that, then my hope is to at least feel better/more efficient on my runs.

I have one more week of my strength training program, which is hypertrophy focused. Meaning, the goal is to lift as heavy as you can for a short amount of time to BUILD muscle, rather than maintain it the way condition training does. I’ll be glad to have it finished so I can focus more on my runs, rather than try to balance the two. I’m also revisiting the push up challenge that I completed in January: doing a push up for every date of the month. But of course this month–it’s with the vest! 🙂 If anything, I’ll at least have some killer triceps at the end of this–summer is coming! 😉 On to week two!

Here are some quick pics from last week. My weighted vest, the spring bingo card that’s FREE in my shop (in case you missed it, you can download it here), the kids “mining for chocolate chips” as we listen to The Endless Steppe on audio, Noah making potato pancakes to go along with his presentation on Poland, and Eli’s karate team warming up at their tournament on Saturday! Eli came away with second place in kata and fourth place in weapons. He did great!