Spring wrap-up, Summer plans!

Philip and I were reunited with Quinn after the Lincoln Half!

On very first blog post back in February, I basically laid out my plan for this past spring.  I know I have been covering each individual race in the race reports, but here is a summary:

Empyrean Trail 5K (Feb. 1)- 2nd overall out of 108 women

Kicks and Kisses 5k (Feb. 15)- 2nd overall out of 153 women
Bryan Health Indoor Triathlon (Feb. 15)- 2nd overall out of 58 women

Leprechaun Chase NE (March 8)- 12th overall out of 1110 women

Leprechaun Chase IA (March 15)- 5th overall out of 723 women

(possibly) Ni-Bthaska-Ke Trail Run  (April 6)- didn't end up running this

Lincoln Half-Marathon (May 4)- 22nd overall out of 5597

Market to Market Relay IA (May 10)- 1st overall women's team out of 65 teams

Honestly, I couldn't be happier about how this spring went! But after lots of hard training and racing, I decided to take a full week off--no running AT all--to recharge my body and mind.  I spent last week trying to catch up on work at home (is that ever possible?!) and trying to arrange my racing and training schedule for this summer.  

Training:  Deciding what marathon training plan that Philip and I would use for Twin Cities this fall was a hard decision.  There are so many out there! After talking to some friends about what they've done and what's worked for them, we decided on the FIRST training program.  Now, I was very hesitant to choose this one as the speed work looks ridiculous, but I really liked the long run schedule.  I think that we are going to focus on completing our long runs each week and I'll pick/choose/move around the speed work.  (I did a version of FIRST for my half-marathon this spring and really enjoyed it.) I think that I will try to do longer repeats this summer (mile, two-mile, maybe even 3 mile repeat-type stuff.)  We'll see.  So, my plan is to do one speed session, one long run, 3 easy runs of varying distances, and several sessions of cross-training per week (bike, swim, elliptical).  The cross training will be extremely important as we're signed up for two olympic distance triathlons and one sprint.  

Here is a link to our training plan:

http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/less-more-marathon-plan?page=single

Racing:

Havelock 10k (June 7)

CorNfieldCorNfield 10k (June 28)

Seward Optimist 10k (July 4)

Lincoln Mile (July 13)

Omaha Tri (July 20)

CSG Tri (July 27)

NE State Fair Marathon (August 23)--not sure if i'll race the half or do full as training run

Hy-Vee Tri (August 31)

I have several races on the docket after August, but will probably leave it there for now as I have some stuff to hammer out yet regarding our fall schedule.  Definitely Harvest Moon Hustle, Twin Cities Marathon, and Market to Market NE though! :)

Lots of miles to look forward to this summer! :)