Sarah's Stride

I'm on my way to completing #68: Run at lesat 3 5k's per year. Josh and I just signed up for our first 5k of the season. It's going to be on May 16th. It's called Sarah's Stride benefitting the Ronald McDonald House. We plan on doing 4 5k's this summer: one in May, one in June, and two in July.

Josh and I also just started a 5k training program, which will be done right before our last race at the end of July. We're hoping to get our best times at that race, thanks to this program.

If you're interested in our program, or starting your own, here is how we got our's.
We went to http://www.runnersworld.com/.

Click on the 'training' tab.

Then, towards the right of the page, there will be box that says 'Smart Coach Personalized Training Program'.

In that box, you will have to enter a recent 5k race time. I put in 27 min. I believe that's the lowest time I've ever run a 5k in. I suppose I could go back and look up all my previous races to see the exact times, but I didn't want to. :-)

You'll then have to answer a few more questions in that box: what kind of race are you training for (5k), how many miles on average do you run each week (I put 11-15), and how hard do you want to train? (I put hard; Josh put very-hard)

Then click on 'go'.

The next screen it takes you to will be the training schedule. You can then click on the big words in red 'revise your training program'.

You might have to answer some of the same questions again, but this screen allows you to choose how many weeks you want to train for. We chose 12 weeks, because that takes us up to our last 5k in the end of July.

Then click 'go' again and you have your training program!

We started training yesterday! Thursdays are considered our 'speedwork' days. We had to do 5 miles total and including in those 5 miles: 3 800's at a 4.10 pace (Josh had a 3.42 pace) with 400 jogs in between. So we warmed up with a 1.5 mile jog, did 3 800's and 2 400's in between them, and then cooled down with another 1.5 mile jog. I was tired at the end of that!

I'm hoping that by doing this training program, this will help me accomplish #66: Run a 5k in less than 24 minutes. A couple years ago, I got my best time of 24.40 or so (I can't remember the exact seconds). Let's hope I can beat that this year!