The next phase

Hmm, that little break turned out to be a lot longer than I'd anticipated. I'm not even going to try to get up to date on the weekly roundups except to say that I continued to bumble along for the rest of December and into early January ... aiming for 6 days per week of exercise and sometimes getting there, but not pushing myself super hard.

Then the breath of fresh air known as SuperAthlete J (SAJ) returned from her 6-week holiday (yes, you read it right) in Australia and we were off and running -- literally and figuratively. We immediately embarked on a 16-week weight training plan that she'd read about: it's supposedly guaranteed to increase lean muscle mass. I'll include the specifics and a link to it in another posting.

At the same time, we also started training for the Mercer Island Half Marathon in March.

http://www.mercerislandhalf.com/index.html

Sounds like a cakewalk after training for a full marathon, doesn't it? Not quite. This time, at SAJ's urging, we're doing the intermediate plan instead of the novice. The main difference between the plans, in my estimation, is speedwork. We're doing lots of tempo and pace runs -- pushing ourselves a lot harder than we ordinarily would -- and the intervals are really challenging: they involve escalating numbers of quarter-mile sprints as the training calendar progresses.

Whew! But you know, so far it's really fun. I came out of December feeling a bit flabby and uninspired ... now I'm completely back to the gung ho. It's pretty fantastic.