Lincoln Half Marathon Training - Week 3

A slight increase in training this week, but still an "easy" week compared to how training will be from now on.  In the coming week, I hope to get back into full swing, with a speed intervals workout, a tempo run, a full (9 mile) long run, and two cross training days.  (The full summary of Week 3 is after the jump)

Lincoln Half Marathon Training Plan

I guess it's about that time to start fulling planning out my training plan for the Lincoln Half Marathon.  I plan on using the skeleton of the same program that I used for the Disney Half (the Run Less, Run Faster Program, summarized in this post), but I'm going to tweak it a little bit.  Rather than two cross-training days every week, I'm going to throw in an Easy Run (e.g., "junk miles") every once and awhile.  I just want to try it out.  I'm still going to try and do cross-training every week (and hopefully not skip so many workouts like I did last time), but I want to mix it up a bit.  Check out the full plan after the jump.

Lincoln Half Marathon Training - Weeks 1 and 2

After the Disney Half Marathon, I took a long overdue vacation with my wife and a bunch of friends that included visiting the Walt Disney World parks (all but Disney's Animal Kingdom), Universal Islands of Adventure, and taking a short (3 night) Disney Cruise.  Technically, Week 1 of my training program for the Lincoln Half Marathon was Disney race week, so I'm going to keep the numbering convention for training weeks.

2012 Walt Disney World Half Marathon Recap

January 7, 2012 was definitely the best running day I’ve ever had. I don’t have any other big races to compare it to, but the Walt Disney World Half Marathon is the best race I’ve ever been a part of.
The Race Plan
I had bought pace bands from races2remember.com. I had bought bands for 2 hours, 1 hour, 58 minutes, and for 1 hour, 56 minutes (you get three bands for $7.50 when you buy them). The cool thing about the bands is that they are actually customized to the course so it adds some time for miles that have lots of hills, and subtracts some time for miles that are flat or even downhill. They must have someone actually review the course (and for a big race like this, it has probably been refined over the years).

Disney... completed. PR... check.

I will write a more thorough race recap either tomorrow or the day after, but for now I'll just post the two pictures below.

Official chip time was 1:55:07, which is a personal record by more than 10 minutes.  It was a good day.

Starting... NOW!

(Image source: @DisneySports on Twitter, via the Poise in Parma blog)

If I have set up Blogger's auto-post correctly, I am currently in a mob of people very similar to the picture above (taken at the 2011 Walt Disney World Half Marathon, the fireworks are going off, and I am starting what will be (I hope) a Personal Record in the Half Marathon.

For those of you that want to, check out my automatic updates of my race status on my Twitter feed

2012 Disney Half Marathon Training Summary

OK, how awesome would it be to run in these (barring injury)

Today marked my last workout part of my training plan for the 2012 Walt Disney World Half Marathon.  Since I didn't really summarize any of my training workouts or weeks of training for this race (which I may do for future races), I decided to do an overall training summary where I figure out totals for everything.

The Myths of Minimalist Running and Foot Injury

From time to time, I will write a bit here and there about minimalist running (also called "barefoot" running).  I'll try not to get too preachy, since I know that minimalist running is not for everyone, but I still want to write about it because I think more people should try it.

The online journal Podiatry Today has posted an article called "Tackling The 10 Myths of Barefoot Running."^{1  There is a lot of technical language in the article, but it provides a nice summary, from foot doctors' perspective, about barefoot running.  Here is a summary of some of the "myths."2}

"You're Taking a Vacation to Disney... Without Your Kids?"

A child finding out an adult is going to Disney World without him
(Image Source: Love Image Collections)

As you may have guessed from this blog's title, I'm a dad.  I have two little kids, a three-year old son and a 19-month old daughter.  Every time I've brought up my vacation to someone at work or friends, this is pretty much how the conversation goes:

Running Daddy: We're going on vacation next week
Coworker #1:  Oh, where are you going?
RD: Florida.
CW1: Disney? [I nod].  Oh, you're kids will LOVE that.
RD: We're not taking the kids.  This is a vacation just for us.
CW1: [with a look of confusion] So you're *not* taking your kids... to Disney World.
RD: Yep
CW1: Hey Bob!  Get a load of this!  This guy's going to Disney and he isn't taking his kids.
Coworker #2: [looking at me like I just told his kids that Santa Clause isn't real]¹But... why?  Why, GOD?!  WHHHHHHYYYYYY!
[And... Scene]

Race Week Is Here!

Even Donald has his "Game Face" on!

Here are my modest goals for the week itself (not including the race):

1. Eat well - I haven't eaten super well during training for this race, so I'm hoping to do a little better for this week.  This includes actually eating breakfast (probably a whole grain cereal each day), avoiding snacking at work (particularly candy), and portion control (since my running miles this week are pretty low).