Virtual Training Partner and ParkRun results!

Week 1 of the Twilight Half training is in the books! How did I do?

Tuesday: 4 x 400s (with a warm up and cool down, plus some jogging in between).

Wednesday: 3 mile tempo run (with a warm up, no time for cooldown!)

Saturday: 5k ParkRun. Not on the training plan, but something "fun" to do.

Sunday: 11k of hell with the roomie. Not pictured because it was a slow painful death march to the finish.

All in all, a great week. I've found that the biggest thing with forcing myself to go "fast" is holding myself accountable to the plan. Last year I had the same goal: get a PR, but I didn't do any speedwork and as a result ended up 8 minutes off my PR in both half marathons.

But this go round? I've got a virtual training partner. Rick is a fellow manager at work and is training for the half as well. He lives in Brisbane so it's not like we could run together, but we both post our workouts to Instagram to keep each other accountable.

If you look closely, you'll notice that Rick is MUCH faster than I am, which has also been pushing me. He'll give me a call if I haven't posted my run for the day and we'll talk through paces and whatnot. The plan is for Rick to pace me to that shiny PR, on the condition that I do all of my training runs.

So yes, the speedwork kills me and today (4 x 800s at a 7:30 mile pace) I wanted to quit SO badly, but the thought of either 1) having to lie about my workout for the "world" to see or 2) having to admit that I cut it short was powerful enough to keep on trucking. Pretty? No. That's why this morning's photo wasn't even a picture of my face (follow me on jewalk85 on Instagram to see all of my workouts!!) and just my shoes. If you want to join, just add the hash tag #virtualtraining.

In other news, I got my snazzy email from ParkRun with my official results from Saturday.

How cool is that??? And how crazy is it that I was so far back and still the 19th woman? Lots of guys running I guess!

How do you keep yourself accountable for training?