Pressing Start

If I had to describe the first week of training, I would have used the term "exhilarating". I'm sure if I hadn't kept up with my fitness during my post-marathon injury, I would have felt like a big heavy brick with super glue stuck to the bottom of my shoes but man, nothing felt better than pressing start on my first training run Monday morning. This week was all about easy pacing. Building a base is what our main focus was all about. I'm honestly terrible at keeping pace, especially slower paces. I took this time to take advantage of the 'workout' setting on my Garmin Fenix 5X and created workouts specifically tailored to my training calendar Kristen created for me. Yep, who knew you could set paces to stay in? I've had this watch for quite some time now and am still learning new bells and tricks on it. Whenever I would either be going too fast or too slow, it would start beeping at me. It took me probably two-three out of the four runs I did to get comfortable with easing up and keeping a solid cadence. Once you get in the mindset, it just comes naturally. Oh yeah, and trying to find a course without any type of incline or decline around here is damn-near impossible. I better be a pro at running hills if they ever (which they will) come in a race course after living here. I'm talking to you, Brooksie Way. I will have my revenge on you one day even if it means flying back to Michigan for the weekend.

Week 1 at a glance (sorry, hard to read!)

I'm honestly surprised how well my paces lined up for the first three workouts. Saturday we incorporated strides to the end of the run. If you aren't familiar with running terms, strides basically mean you go faster for a designated period of time. My recovery for each stride was a steady walk. It felt so good to get out in the early morning but damn, it is so dark around here. Street lights and whatnot are pretty non-existent as they follow a "no light pollution" rule. Thank the lord for headlamps and my Tracer 360 vest! *SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: I have the privilege of being a Noxgear Ambassador and right now they are offering 42% off if you use my code BRITTERS at checkout today (2/10)! You can head here to check out their products. If you are reading this at a later date, you can still get 35% off with the same code. You're welcome!

Tracer 360 Noxgear Vest

All-in-all, I am happy with how week one went. I'm also paying close attention to my pre-run warm up and I believe it's helping. I'm sticking with being consistent with my hip exercises I was given in therapy last spring and do them before every run. I traditionally do a dynamic warmup before and then static stretch and foam roll after. These all add up to me keeping my hands off the Aleve bottle more, that's for sure. Another thing I'm trying to change up is my diet. Yes, if you know me, you know I eat pretty clean most days, so you're probably wondering 'well, what's there to change?' if I eat relatively healthy. I've been eating more of a plant-based diet since November. I don't really like to use the label of 'vegetarian' or 'vegan' as I will most certainly not skip out on a burger from In 'n Out but my wheels are following the veggie road route more than ever before. Why did I choose to do this? I honestly don't have a clear explanation. I'm not looking to lose weight or save the animals (I do love them, though). I definitely feel a difference in energy levels and my digestive track is certainly friendlier, for lack of better terms. As promised in my Instagram post from yesterday, I wanted to share a new recipe I'm trying this week for breakfast. Well, in my case, this is second breakfast. I really hope you get that joke from Lord of the Rings.

Mango Smoothie Bowl

There she is, in all of her glory. I'm basically eating ice cream for breakfast. This bowl is packed with nutrients and is seriously more delicious than I thought it was going to be. I hit up Simply Quinoa for a lot of my plant-based recipes. They have a great filter option that I hope you can use to try something new to make! Oh, and you can click here for the recipe for that yumminess up there.

Next week, we focus on more strides and slightly longer easy-paced runs. The forecast is dipping down a little bit into the 50s but that's perfect running weather if you ask me.