2009 Training Has Begun!

This week marked the beginning of my 2009 training. As I've discussed before, I'm switching over to a Morris-style plan for this year. It's not covered in the book, but I'm beginning with a short preparation phase before I start his Hypertrophy phase. I saw the idea to use a short prep phase on Ashwin's blog, and it makes sense. Coming off a long block of mostly light exercise, it doesn't make sense to jump right in to lifting heavy weights. So, for the next couple weeks, I'll be getting myself ramped up.

My other exercise this week has consisted of one short ride on the trainer and a couple of runs. The run I did on Tuesday was pretty terrible. I was pretty happy about the roads being clear of snow and ice; as a result, I paced myself badly. I went out way too fast and was suffering before I'd gone too far. To top it off, after a long downhill stretch, my knee started bothering me, even though I was well short of my target run time. So, I called it a day and walked home. After I got home, I checked the training log and found that I'd only run twice over the past two weeks, so I probably bit off too much. I had been doing some jump rope stuff, thinking that it was an OK substitute for running, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

I ran again today (on snowy roads), and it went much better. I paced myself better and took a slightly different route that didn't have me going down long hills. It wasn't a particularly comfortable run, but I didn't have any knee problems and I was able to hit my target run time.