Today marks my second week on the Hansons training plan.  I have to say it’s been quite different, as it should!  First a disclaimer – I’m still dealing with glute/hamstring pain, but any of the “difficulties” I have been experiencing have been related to that previous injury, not caused by my new plan.  Although I do think the biggest change for the plan has been running 6 days a week instead of 5.  Sure, 3 of those days are “easy” days, but even an easy run isn’t the same as plain old resting.

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Week 1 and 2 were definitely “do-able” and even a bit redundant.  I’ve now got a better grasp on what time I need to add to my workout in order to accomplish all that I need to do (warm ups, stretches, PT exercises, cool down) in the amount of time that I need to do it (gotta get to work on time!).  For those of you who are familiar with the warm up Hanson drills, I remember them now as “arms, sides, hips, squats, kicks, kicks!”.  Other than finding the plan more time consuming, I haven’t gotten into it enough to decide if I really like it more or not yet.

This morning I did my first S.O.S. workout (that’s Something Of Substance).  It was 12 x 400m at 8:00 pace, with 400m recoveries.  But don’t forget the .5 mile warm up and .5 cool down too!  Actually, I think the warm ups and cool downs are supposed to be from 1.5 – 3 miles, but I think .5 was just fine!

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Alan hit the track with me, which I was quite grateful for because I have a hard time keeping track of repetitions like that!  12 times seemed like a lot, until I thought of it as 6 miles with 400 repeats, and that made a little more sense to me.  These were the splits and paces:

split Pace per mile
2:03 7:57
1:51 8:02
1:50 7:56
1:50 7:59
1:56 7:55
1:49 7:50
1:51 7:42
1:44 7:50
1:53 7:50
1:57 7:42
1:54 7:46
2:00 8:08

I was trying to keep right around 2:01 for each split, and almost all came in a little faster, but over all I was keeping the same “feel” and I think I did pretty good at getting the right paces.  I think I could have done a little better with a different pace setting on my Garmin because the “current pace” always flies around so quickly between 7:45 to 8:20 to 8:00.  It’s just so hard to pinpoint what the pace actually is with that metric.

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Other than that, my runs have been “easy runs” which are around 9:50 to 10:30 min miles.  For my 8 miler on Friday (which will be my “long run” days), I hit the trails with Alan.  It was a beautiful start to my weekend.

2016-05-20 09.03.09

We did goof up a little and went on horse trails.  Not only did we have to be on the look for “fertilizer piles”, it was also super challenging because the trail was all broken up from the horses and it was like running on the beach!  We had to get off that trail.  Oh, and the mosquitos were back in full force. Boo on that!!

My Garmin was also really far off in the woods because I pace that registered as 9:30 outside of the trees registered as 10:50 on the trails.  I’m just not buying that.

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Anyhow, it looks like my upcoming week has more thrown into.  I get at tempo run (pace run), a “long” run, and another set of intervals.  The thing that I will be most challenged with, outside of running 6 days a week, will be making the time to run on the weekends.  As soon as summer kicks in, and we are out having fun, I will have to run in places like the campground.  In my old plan I would shuffle workouts around, but it’s more important to keep the order of the workouts in this plan.

  • Mon – Rest!!
  • Tues – Tempo run, 6 miles (+ warm up & cool down)
  • Weds – 3.1 fun run with kids and Toledo Roadrunners club
  • Thurs – 7 easy miles
  • Fri – 10 miles, long run
  • Sat – 3-4 easy miles
  • Sun – 8 x 600m intervals, 400m rest
  • Total = 40 some miles?  Heck, I don’t know. Not sure how much my warm up and cool downs will be!

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Q: Do you have a lot of bugs where you live?

I love watching House Hunters International when they are in Europe because they never have screens in their windows.  What an odd thing that would be!!  We get a ton of mosquitos around our yard in the summer.

Q:  Do you use the track for interval workouts?

Q:  What was the best part of your weekend?

It was so nice outside that I tackled a whole bunch of yard work.  The bushes no longer look overgrown.  That’s a great feeling of satisfaction!

6 thoughts on “Week 2 of Hansons complete”
  1. When I was following the Hanson plan, I found it was easier to use my old Timex Ironman watch and run by time rather than trying to use the Garmin and run by pace. After a couple of 400s, I figured out what time I needed to be hitting in the corners in order to make the goal.

    1. Maybe a mix? You don’t have a 10 miler this week? I haven’t even got to that part of the book yet. So bad of me! Weds is less miles because of a club race. And I told my coach I didn’t want to run much on Saturdays, so it probably has been tweaked a little. What’s on your schedule?

  2. The Garmin thing really bugs me when running intervals too. I actually tend to run them on the treadmill so that I don’t have to bother with a Garmin on those days (also so I don’t overheat), but I suppose IDEALLY I would run them outdoors! If you find a solution that works great please post about it!
    Kristina recently posted…Kicking Off My 20-Week Chicago Training Plan!My Profile

    1. We ran outside last night and it was around 75. First time it was a “warm” run for me. I was feeling the heat!! Then I thought of you running in that heat down there… whew!!! I give you kudos for that. You are a trooper 🙂

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