Every Mile Earned

I'm just wrapping up week two of marathon training.  It's been a good two weeks but now a change has come to my running.  Because of unforeseen things at home, I've had to switch my coach. If you know Drill Sargent and have thought about hiring him, please do.  He's been an incredible coach. He's a no nonsense coach who will happily give 100% if you are willing to also. He won't waste a second of your time on the road, if you don't waste his time in your workouts.  He helped me to get stronger, faster, build endurance and through the amount of running I was doing, I, finally, was able to lose some of the weight I needed to lose. It is with sadness that I can no longer call him my coach but he'll always be Coach to me! On the flip side, I'll be working with a local coach, who is also one of the runners in my area that I've admired for some time.  I can't speak to JJ as a coach because we are just starting out but as a runner, she's a ...

The RRCA Woman’s Distance Festival and Kid’s Run is a yearly run at Otsiningo Park to help raise money for Mom's House.   On July 16, I ran this 5k.   If you know me, or you’re a part of my on-line running group, you already know the end of the story, so I’ll jump to the punch line.   I ran this race in 25:58. Last year I ran it in 32:11.   I couldn’t have done this without a whole lot of painful work the last 6 weeks, without my husband's sacrifice of time with me, my sacrifice of time with family and the hard work of Drill Sargent putting together a personalized plan for me to follow.   I'm still in shock at how well this race went for me, especially since it was an evening race, the sun was actually out (we've had a very cool and cloudy summer) and the temps were in the low 80's.   I spent the day trying to stay off my legs as much as I could. I made sure I drank lots of water, ate very carefully and in general tried not to think about the...

This past week has been a full week of training. I'm exhausted but mostly happy with how the week went. I did the first strength workout that Drill Sergeant has designed for me. He's been letting me use my own favorite workouts but this week he replaced one of mine with one he designed for me.  I really liked it.  It gave me a chance to see that I was a little stronger than I thought. The workout had a few sets and push ups are part of each set. I've never been able to do them but I've been working on them in my other workouts.  I always do them on my knees but Tuesday I decided to try at least a few off my knees. I did 3-4 of each set that way, till I hit the last set.  I was able to do ALL 10 off my knees. I didn't do them fast but I did them.  That was probably the high point of my training week.   I also had my second timed mile last week.  It was rough. My leg cramped on me, I couldn't get my breathing under control, my splits weren't want...

This has been a good week. A week of hard workouts. A week of some good decisions. Drill Sargeant decided to keep me on his team and I decided to keep him as my coach. I can't believe it's really been four weeks of our trial period together. I like the workouts he's scheduled for me. They are not workouts I'd do on my own or a schedule I'd have the discipline to follow. And there is the accountability that I need to make sure I actually do the workouts. Yesterday was my long run. 10 miles and I was able to sustain an average 9:30 pace. As I was running, I was falling behind the pace I wanted to keep, and in my minds eye, I could see Drill Sergeant yelling at me to "Suck it up Buttercup" and telling me not to quit. I'm sure if he'd been there, it would have been something like that. It was just what I needed at the time. It's also why I've decided his blog name is Drill Sergeant. This is how I view my running coach when I'm stru...