Yesterday was the beginning of my 12-week training cycle for Zumbro 17. I am pretty excited! It feels nice to be training for something again. I put in a decent base-building month or so, averaging 29 miles/week over 5 weeks.

Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of 17 mile racing plans out there! It’s unfathomable that this uber-popular distance would get such little attention. I created my own plan, starting with the Hal Higdon intermediate half marathon plan, but making some minor alterations.

I’m still moving ahead with MAF training. My hope is that I will see some real improvement with this training once the weather is milder. I need to be patient. The only speedwork I’ll be doing is hill work, and I’ll be sticking to the same max heart rate goal.

For strength training, I am trying to do the Myrtl routine at least a few times a week. It has really helped the funny little twinge I get in my hip from time to time. I’m going to try to mix in yoga, push-ups, and planks when I can, but make the Myrtl exercises my priority.

I need to make some dietary changes, but I haven’t quite decided what to do yet. I need to muster up the energy to plan and pre-make lunches, to start. Since I am working full-time now, rather than juggling school and work, I have more of a routine, but I’m also a lazy eater, I just eat what’s convenient. I don’t see that changing too much all at once.

I have two vacations planned during the training cycle: a five-day trip to Florida at the end of February, and a four-day trip down to the Twin Cities for the NCHC hockey tournament mid-March. I plan to make those both cutback weeks and go with the flow. My family doesn’t need to wait around while I run for 4 hours. I also don’t want to run for 4 hours in Florida; I won’t be acclimated.

Speaking of the weather, today is the last really awful cold day in the forecast, so I’m looking forward to getting outside to do some runs later in the week. I’ll be back to double-digit runs in a few weeks, so I need the nicer weather to continue!