Walk, Run, Walk, Walk, Walk..

As Waleah mentioned earlier she has taken a break from running but is continuing to train by walking. Since this is a joint effort we want to work together as much as possible. What we have been doing is the warm up walk to the lake together (approx 2k) and then I will run my intervals and meet back with her for the walk home and cool down. A great idea but we didn't plan it so well last night. I had a shorter run of 3k last night but once we miscalculated how far around the lake we went and we ended up doing a total of 12k! We need to figure things out a little better so our "resting" days are what they are supposed to be, short and rewarding.
Things I have noticed now that I am getting into my training:
1) I look forward to my runs. I never thought this would happen. After running 7k on Sunday (the furthest I have ever run at once) I felt I could keep going indefinitely. Last night was a little harder but it still felt good.
2) Music is great to run with, I took Waleah's iPod on Sunday and listened to some Switchfoot and it made the run go by so much quicker and I found myself looking less at how much time do I have left on a particular interval. Last night I loaded some Daft Punk on my new shiny black iPod. That was great for setting a pace but very hard to judge my interval time and the run seemed very long, I probably will not be putting too much of that type of music on my playlist.
3) Our GPS is a great tool, it helps me keep my pacing to a level I am comfortable at without letting me slow down too much. It's also great for tracking exactly how far we went without having to figure it out on a map. I just set the training intervals and reps and run. We'll pick up a second one this week for Waleah so she has a better idea of her pace and distance on her walks.
4) Now that we've started running around Burnaby Lake I can't believe we spent so long running around a track. I guess for the shorter runs it was ok, but the track is pretty boring compared to the trails around the lake. Sunday's training will be another step up, I'll have finally hit 10 & 1 intervals (10 minutes running and 1 walking) and this is what I will be doing for right up until and part of the marathon. It's part of the Running Room's training schedule and since Team Diabetes is being trained by the Running Room I'll stick to their plan since they know far more about running than I do.
5) I still haven't figured out how running affects my blood sugar on a consistent basis. At first it seemed to drop 2 points for every 20 minutes of training. On Sunday and last night it only dropped 1 point and that was over 2 hours of training. The only thing I had to eat was a banana before we started. I think that now that my body is getting used to running my sugars are lasting longer. Then again I am probably talking out of my ass. :) I hope to figure it out eventually so I don't have to worry about a low blood sugar during a long run and abort it. That would suck and throw a kink in plans.

That's it for now, have a happy Easter weekend if we don't check in sooner.