Run Day, Screaming Thighs, and Progress Report

Okay so today is the first day I attempted the 2 mile run as Saturdays's according to Disney Run's Training Program should be about distance and adding distance every week rather than time. I will say I started the first mile off pretty strong with an average pace of 14'44"/mile. It was so humid and the sun was so bright, but I did manage to break through my mental barrier and keep going until about a quarter into the second mile where my thighs thought they were going to die. I could breathe, I wasn't tired, but my body was giving up on me. I kept going anyway determined to at least finish the two miles even if I had to walk the rest of it which I sadly had to do. My second mile had an average pace of  17'25"/mile which was a decrease of 19% in performance. You can see how I completely choked the in the pace graph below.

I ran these numbers through Runswift Pace Calculator on my Windows 8 Phone and it predicted that it would take me just 56 seconds shy of 3 hours to complete 10 miles. I took a screenshot so you can see the whole breakdown. Hopefully these numbers will decrease every week. :) That being said this is probably the only truly useful running app on the Windows 8 operating system what with it's limited store selection but for something simple like this is has proved a valuable tool in guessing how I'm going to finish up.

Below is my progress report for the last week. Nike+ also uses a trophy system, I won my first trophy this week for running 3 times in a week. On my dashboard it displays tips that are appropriate for your data, for instance after syncing this last run my advice was to Pace Myself - You're starting fast and losing steam. You can see my average pace for this week has gone down with each run and that I've already run on a road and that I have done a run at each point in the day this week. For argument's sake let's look at those times. The  first run I did this week I did on Tuesday at 5PM and I ran the mile in 14'46" with an average pace of 14'. The second run I did this week I did on Wednesday at 9:45PM and I ran the mile in 15'48" with an average pace of 14'33". The last run I did today Saturday at 9:30AM and I ran the mile in 14'42" with an average pace of 14'44" and the second mile I ran in 18'26" with an average pace of 17'25". So my pace most suffers with additional mileage and I seem to run my best run after work hours but before it's dark out.

The Training Goal Report: Last but not least let's check out where I am in my training goals I am in week 2 of my training plan. According to my predicted splits it at this juncture it will take me 1 hr, 7 min, and 37 sec to complete 4 miles, I'm putting these all into the same unit for calculation simplicity which comes to 67.62 minutes, when divided out by 4 comes out to 16.905 minutes. My goal by end of Week 4 is to 4 miles with an average pace of 14 minutes per mile. So at this point I'm short by nearly 3 minutes per mile so my Weekly goal next week is shave a minute and a half per mile off my time. I had hoped to lose half an inch off my waistline by Week 4 - my measurements won't be too good this week as I didn't measure myself until Wednesday but for the sake of consistency I will measure anyway :) My waistline is 27 inches same as Wednesday.

My Improvement Plan - This week I did not follow my schedule and I cheated a few times here or there too so next week I will be active for at least 1 hour every day in some form and I will limit my intake of sugared beverages and junk food. That's right I confess I ate pizza for dinner Thursday night and Friday I ate a hamburger!