Monday, 10/25/21
In the Higdon plan, Mondays are rest days, so it almost feels like cheating to include this, but that's what's on his website! Anyway, this was the day I labeled all the days in an Excel sheet, printed it out, and stuck it on the fridge. So that's something.
Tuesday, 10/26/21
1.5 miles - 0.25 walk, 0.5 run, 0.25 walk, 0.5 run - in one of the local forest preserves. 13:37 average pace, which would be just under six hours over a marathon distance! Kind of silly to think about that now, but on the other hand, unless I plan to do Honolulu again (which I don't, in large part because by the time of the 2022 version I'll be 40 already), pace does have some relevance. In the end, though, I think this will end up being more about distance tolerance. Yes, technically I tolerated the distance in 2011, but not really. If I actually get to the point where I can "run a marathon" I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do it fast enough not to get timed out of other courses.
Wednesday, 10/27/21
3 miles in the forest preserve, again alternating between 0.25 walk and 0.5 run. This time my average pace was 12:46, which was pretty good considering - nearly a minute faster than yesterday even over twice the distance (especially considering it was 12:39 until I had to walk 0.05 miles back to the car), and I feel like I was taking it fairly easy. I did gas out kinda hard on the last quarter mile, but if this were easy from the start I wouldn't need to do it. The next three days are much lighter before the next 3-mile run on Sunday, so we'll see how things feel by then.
Thursday, 10/28/21
1.5 miles, with the same 0.25 walk/0.5 run pace. I'll probably keep doing that for at least a couple weeks unless I have a particularly good reason not to, so from here on out let's just assume that's what I did until I say otherwise. My legs were not especially fond of me this morning, but I got through it, and the next two days are basically both rest days (30 minutes of walking on Saturday isn't nothing, but it isn't running), so let's see how things look on Sunday.
Friday, 10/29/21
On October 17 I did a 5K, my first in nearly two years (though I did do a virtual 10K in May of 2020). For most of the next week, my ankles were pretty darn sore. This week, things have not been nearly that bad during my down time. So that seems like a positive. This was a rest day and it was fine.
Saturday, 10/30/21
The next-easiest thing to a rest day is a 30-minute walk. As I said on Thursday, that's not nothing, but it's certainly a lot easier to tolerate than anything involving a run. I did a very straightforward 3 mph pace and it was no problem - definitely wasn't too sore or anything.
Sunday, 10/31/21
The training plan calls for the longest runs on Sunday, so this was the long run to cap the first week, another three miles. (The Wednesday run was the same length, of course, but that run stays the same length throughout the duration of the 12 weeks while the Sunday run steps up to 6 miles.) Things got a little tough energy-wise about halfway through, but I ate some Clif Shot Bloks during the 1.5-1.75 and 2.25-2.5 mile walk sections and that was enough to get me there. Annoyingly, while my legs mostly feel not too bad in the wake of the first week, I'm starting to notice a suggestion of pain around the sesamoid bones at the base of my big toes, which in the past have been one of the more prominent pain points during my running. As of now it's not painful so much as "the existence of that area of the body is registering on my nervous system," so we'll see how that develops. It's not an unmanageable thing but boy would I rather not have to deal with it, although between that and, say, knee pain, I will take the former any day of the week.
