Holding Myself Accountable

It's official: I'm currently finishing up with week one of training for a marathon. The marathon that I'm training for is the Carlsbad Marathon in beautiful Carlsbad, CA and is the first race in the San Diego Triple Crown series. The most exciting part of this race? While I'll be running the full marathon, my incredible husband will be running the half marathon. This will actually only be the second race of mine that he's attended, with the first being our Thanksgiving 5k last year. Wow. I've come a long way since then! :) Never ever in a million years would I have thought that I would even be slightly interested in running 26.2 miles for fun. Even when I went out for that first hellish run with my best friend Jessica in the Summer of 2010, the thought never even crossed my mind that I would be able to complete a 5k. Here I am, early Fall of 2011 and thus far I have completed three 5k's, two 10k's and two half marathons.

With all of that being said, I needed to come up with a way to make sure my training gets done. Once my husband gets home from Afghanistan, he'll be there to push me and make sure that all my workouts get completed. Until then, it's just me, myself and I. I'm not going to say that I'm a slacker (okay, okay. I'm a slacker), but sometimes I let life get in the way of my training. I think the only way to truly hold myself accountable to my marathon training schedule is to blog at the end of each week about the previous weeks training. Sure, I log my miles and workouts on dailymile, but no one knows what my training schedule was supposed to be except for me. As much as I love dailymile and absolutely swear by it, it doesn't really give me that extra push to get my miles in.

Are you good at getting training plans completed the way that they were meant to be completed? How do you hold yourself accountable?

Planking: All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

I know. I know. I know. I said this morning that I was going to put up a running post tomorrow, but I really didn't want to forget feel like waiting. Sure, maybe I feel like I need to make up for lost time, since I haven't blogged in a month. But anyways, here's a running blog. A day early.

And here it goes...

Last night I was checking out my DailyMile and realized that thus far in 2011 I have only ran a total of 266 miles. Depressing. So it got me thinking that in 2012 I want to make some major changes. Not just want... need. How major? Run at least 1,000 miles in the year 2012. But then I starting thinking, why should I wait until 2012? Let's start now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not January 1st, 2012. Today. For the next 52 weeks I plan on running at least 20 miles per week, to put me at a grand total of 1,000 miles. Will it suck? Yes. Is it do-able? Definitely. Will I need to find some major motivation somewhere? Heck yes, you betcha. I would love to be taken seriously as a runner, as well as think of myself as a serious runner. Sure, I've completed in one half marathon and I have my second half marathon on Sunday, but I don't think I'm anywhere as serious as I should be.

Planking. What the cool kids are doing.

While I'm putting in some major miles for the next 52 weeks, I figured I should kill myself a little bit more throw something else into the mix. Planking. No, no, no. Not planking like all the cool kids are doing (see photo: on the right). Planking like all the real cool kids are doing (see photo: below). So starting today I'm also starting 365 days of planking (#plankaday on twitter). What are planks? There are many variations, as is with most exercises. The form that I'm used to is the one pictured below. Lay on your stomach, on the floor resting on your forearms. Push off the floor, raising up onto toes and resting on the elbows. You want to keep your body as flat and in line as possible, and hold for as long as possible. Planks are an amazing workout, strengthening your arms, back and core as well as your stabilizer muscles. Really. Who doesn't want amazing arms, back and core? Don't get me wrong, planks suck. Right now I can only get in about 60 seconds until I'm falling to the ground, but after killing myself with some practice I'm going to be amazing!

Planking. What the really cool kids are doing.

Why wait for January 1st for everyone else to decide it's the appropriate time to make new years resolution? So not only is it not the first of the year, it's not even the first of the month. Ooh, such a rebel.



[Thanks to my friend Vincenzo (@Spincenzo on twitter) for letting me use the picture of him and his brother planking like the cool kids.]