Now that my one "goal" 5K is over, I've moved into off-season training mode. It's got me cross training at least one day a week and doing one extra day of weight training.
I'm still getting into the groove of the plan, but now that I've committed myself to working out right away in the morning or right after work, it's made things a little easier.
I still have two more 5Ks coming up, the first the Girls on the Run 5K, where I'm likely going to be running with one of my girls, so won't be going for any personal goals, just being a cheerleader and enjoying race day with my team. The second is a Turkey Trot 5K that is sort of near my parent's house (is a 45 minute drive in rural Iowa "near"?), that I may or may not try to race. It depends on what the field looks like that day. Small town races often bring a rare chance at an AG award for us slower folks, so I always try to take advantage.
After that, I will simply be focusing on improving my strength, my mechanics and increasing my endurance. I found a great year-round training program for sprinters on this website called stack.com (it has amazing performance-based training programs, as opposed to many of the aesthetic-based programs on other sites like bodybuilding.com), and even though I'm not a sprinter, I liked that the programs incorporated power lifting, which is one of my favorite things to do in the gym. The high school off-season program is 3 days a week of lifting, which fits nicely with 3 days a week of running and one day for whatever I want to do.
I also have started rock climbing again. A gym finally opened north of the river in KC, and I took a belay class last week and will buy a punch card and try to go a few times a month. They have a monthly membership, which includes access to a weight area, but I'll wait until the new year for that. I'm trying to keep up with yoga, which mostly includes a few impromptu sun salutations here and there. Even that little bit feels wonderful, though.
Finally, during my shorter weekday run, I have started incorporating just a little bit of speedwork. It's nothing structured, just about 100 meters of strides to focus on generating power from my hips, followed by 300-400 meters of easy running. My weekend runs had been a struggle to keep running constantly until I discovered I was trying to run too fast. Now, I try to keep my heart rate under 165 and that has made my easy longer runs, well, easy.
And I finally decided on paint colors for the living, dining and kitchen in the house.
So yeah. This off season is going to be pretty darn good.
