First Week of Training

2012 has started off with a really good week.  Hayden is registered for preschool (he starts Monday), Brenna allowed me to dress her a few times and I've started to feel my motivation return.

Although I have turned back on my Garmin, I don't feel quite ready to bust out the speedwork.  So, for now, I am training for trail races and 5Ks with the jogging stroller.  These races are nice because it takes off the pressure of needing/wanting to be fast.

Monday - Nothing!
Tuesday - 6.5 miles with the jogging stroller in the wind.  This was our first run of the year:

They were quite happy about it:

Wednesday - 9 mile trail run at South Mountain.  This was a pretty hard run since it was all hills, but a decent pace nonetheless.
Thursday:  7 miles with the jogging stroller.  We played around South Mountain.

(and in case you are curious, no, Brenna is not wearing pants).
Friday: 21 mile bike ride @ 19.8mph bricked with 2.5 trail miles.  I say "trail" here rather loosely because it was more of simply off-roading through desert terrain.  But I was resourceful and ran up this neat hill a few times:

Saturday - 10 miles, which included a 2 mile uphill and about 3 miles on wonderful trails.  I also had wonderful company!  This originally was only a 8.5 mile run but it bugged me that my "long run" was not the longest run of the week.  I guess I finally found myself a pet-peeve.
Sunday - That is tomorrow so I cannot report it yet.

So now that I have started training, I just need to fill out my race calendar.  There are a lot of races so it is somewhat overwhelming.

The first race in consideration is the Coldwater Trail Race. I am actually sure that I am going to do this race, I am just undecided about the distance. My options are a 4-miler and an 11-miler.  It feels strange to be timid about 11 miles, but I think this is going to be a very hard trail.  I know that part of it is through sand, and I know that there are boulders that you need to climb over.

My friends are doing the 11-miler.  But my friends are also Ironmen.


There is an Exterra trail race a few weeks later that I am considering as well.

And then finally, there are a TON of 5Ks in February. I see no reason why I should not do as many as I can with my stroller.  This will be our last year running together, I want to make it special.

I am not going to plan anything past February, so we will revisit this conversation in March.