Six Months of Hard Work

I’m totally psyched for my trip to Disney World for my first-ever 5K (The “Princess and the Frog Royal Family 5K” on March 6th). It’s going to be legendary.
You can check out the details at http://www.disneyprincesshalfmarathon.com/. The route map for my 5K was recently posted to the site, and as expected, it’s just a quick jaunt around Epcot. How cool is that?

I met with my trainer this evening after work, and we discussed the plan for the next nine days. I’ll run 4 miles tomorrow, but then my other remaining runs before my big day will be the regular 3.1 miles (5K). There might be a sprint workout in there too. As usual, I’ll be doing strength and cardio workouts on the in-between days. I plan to set a new personal record on one of my pre-race 5K runs; my time to beat is 29:11. (I finished in 29:25 yesterday, but while running I didn’t realize what my personal best was. Had I known I totally could’ve beaten it I totally would’ve!!)

Why am I planning to achieve my best time BEFORE the event? Because it’s a Disney event…there will be Disney characters and photographers along the course for participants to have their picture taken with. I just want to have fun and enjoy it, I’m not going to worry (too much) about my time!!

Two weeks ago I was on a “California Adventure” with my parents, visiting the west coast relatives. The vacation, along with a strained hamstring, took me out of my routine there for a bit, but I’m back at it now. (It didn’t take me totally out of it, but I just wasn’t at the gym EVERY DAY as I’m accustomed to.) My hammy is still a little tight sometimes, but all in all it is feeling pretty good now and I’m back into my normal routine. I really pushed myself hard yesterday to complete my 3.1 miles in 29:25! I hadn’t pushed that hard since before the California Adventure.

There was a point in time that I thought that maybe I could/should start training to maybe someday do something as long as a half-marathon. Well, now I’m not so sure. After having done a few runs as long as five miles, I really don’t know how interested I am in running much more than a 5K. At present I’m thinking I’ll just become a serious 5K runner. I’ve already signed up for http://www.ringinginspring.com/ in April and I’ll probably do http://www.kentsrun.com/ in May. If a neat 10K presents itself, I may consider training for it, but for now, 5K is just great!

I don’t get around to blogging very often, so this will probably be my last running-related post until after my Disney trip. Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joangrott for my daily workout updates and any tweets while I’m at Disney World!