So for the last few months, I have been really dodgy on my running. I haven’t kept any schedule that remotely resembles regularity. My running partner moved away to California for a new job and I’ve been struggling keeping myself motivated and accountable. I also have a terrible habit of pacing too fast, feeling like crap, then pausing the GPS unit while I catch my breath. I really want to break this habit.

Today is a new day. From here on out, I will start posting my pace charts. Since I am currently using Sport Tracks for my training log, I can generate the pace chart as a PNG directly. From there, I use F-Spot to tag the image and then upload it to my NextGen gallery. Every week, I will post the week’s worth of images and summarize how the training towards a sub-2 hour half-marathon.

I should note that I got this idea from Thomas Bubendorfer, who’s excellent blog I have become an avid reader. He also posts his heart-rate graphs, but I only have the Garmin 205, so no heart-rate.

So to kick things off, here is this week’s training. I had the Qualifier this week and I’m going to a funeral here in about an hour. So training early in the week didn’t happen, and I won’t be able to train again until I get back on Sunday evening (probably just go to the gym instead). I decided the quickest way to force my body and lungs to get accustomed to the pace I want to run is to just do it and progressively extend the distance. For the first week or 2 my intervals will be a single 1 mile sprint. I can’t do a long run this weekend, but I was start again at something less than 8 (probably 6 next week).

Without further ado, here is this week’s training:

I should also note that it does not appear that the NextGen gallery supports adding the detected tags to the official WordPress taxonomy. For the time being, the image tags will not appear in the tag cloud, so I won’t duplicate the tag by creating one now.

Also, you might notice a few significant drops in the paces. The bad habit I mentioned that I want to break. Basically, I stopped the watch to catch my breath, then started it back up. This habit can make a 30 minute run stretch on for upwards of an extra 15 minutes and it really bugs me that I do it. By posting these pace charts, I’m hoping to train harder and stop pausing the watch (unless I have to, i.e. for traffic or water).

tags: fspot, nextgen, running, sweat