Every Mile Earned

I'm just wrapping up week two of marathon training.  It's been a good two weeks but now a change has come to my running.  Because of unforeseen things at home, I've had to switch my coach. If you know Drill Sargent and have thought about hiring him, please do.  He's been an incredible coach. He's a no nonsense coach who will happily give 100% if you are willing to also. He won't waste a second of your time on the road, if you don't waste his time in your workouts.  He helped me to get stronger, faster, build endurance and through the amount of running I was doing, I, finally, was able to lose some of the weight I needed to lose. It is with sadness that I can no longer call him my coach but he'll always be Coach to me! On the flip side, I'll be working with a local coach, who is also one of the runners in my area that I've admired for some time.  I can't speak to JJ as a coach because we are just starting out but as a runner, she's a ...

This has been a good week. A week of hard workouts. A week of some good decisions. Drill Sargeant decided to keep me on his team and I decided to keep him as my coach. I can't believe it's really been four weeks of our trial period together. I like the workouts he's scheduled for me. They are not workouts I'd do on my own or a schedule I'd have the discipline to follow. And there is the accountability that I need to make sure I actually do the workouts. Yesterday was my long run. 10 miles and I was able to sustain an average 9:30 pace. As I was running, I was falling behind the pace I wanted to keep, and in my minds eye, I could see Drill Sergeant yelling at me to "Suck it up Buttercup" and telling me not to quit. I'm sure if he'd been there, it would have been something like that. It was just what I needed at the time. It's also why I've decided his blog name is Drill Sergeant. This is how I view my running coach when I'm stru...

My 1st week of marathon training has started.  I'm not actually running a marathon in the fall. I'm running Runner's World Half Marathon and Festival, which is 4 races over three days for a total of 26.2 miles. A few weeks ago I was so frustrated, with about 5 different marathon plans sitting in front of me. I knew a cookie cutter plan wasn't for me. I knew from previous experience, I wouldn't follow one the way I should. I decided I was going to create my own plan.  I was still lost though because there are so many running workout you can add to a plan; track runs, hills, repeats, long runs, race pace, fartleks, cross training. I was feeling the pressure of putting together a plan that I would actually follow too.  I love to have a schedule but I'm not good on the follow through. I think I can skip a day and make it up later. I slacked off on my half marathon training and even though I had a race I enjoyed, I didn't race that run at all.  I had about 2 m...