Entering Races for Training

The past week has been good, another short working week with Easter Monday and Anzac Day on the Friday so a perfect week to start increasing my weekly kilometres. 
Easter Monday I tagged along with Mel (who was making a race comeback after a stint of injuries and bad luck) some of the running crew who were participating in the Anzac Run. The race started at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne with 5km and 10km courses around the Tan. I didn't enter the race this year, but wished I had, it was one of the smaller runs with a great atmosphere and all for an amazing cause. Instead I did 2 laps on the Tan, one easy lap and one hard to finish, so about 7.6k's all up. We then headed out for brekky all together, we all know how much I love food, so no guesses as to why my favourite thing to do after a run!  

Post run brekky on Easter Monday

Wednesday night track session included an extra 2km warm up and I also added in a 30 min run on a Friday, the day before my long run to fatigue my legs a bit. This will hopefully get me used to running on tired legs. I had sleep in on Friday morning (Anzac Day) and headed out mid-morning and out for a post run brekky again.
I also hit the longest run this year, 20km's in approx 1 hour 50 mins with Lisa which took my total kilometres for the week 41km's....still 1.2km's shy of the full marathon distance, a scary thought!

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how I've pulled up after last week and looking forward to tackling the next 10 weeks.

This weekend my long run will be on Sunday as I'm running in the Puffing Billy Great Train Race. This is a run Mel has done a few times before I started running and it's one I've always wanted to do. I missed the cut off for registrations last year (it's capped at 3,300 participants), but made sure I got in for this year. 

Apart from Puffing Billy, I entered a couple of races that will fall during my training program to change courses up to keep long runs interesting and challenge myself a bit.
Run for the Kids was my first race in the program I've also entered the Great Ocean Road Half Marathon (which is actually 23km's) in a couple of weeks. 
I did Run for the Kids with the intention to run hard and hopefully get a PB. Still being 12 weeks out, it wouldn't affect my training during the week too much if I pulled up sore (which I did!).
The next two races I plan to use strictly as training runs, so I'm going into them both as I would any other long run and try my best not to get too caught up in the atmosphere and push too hard! I doubt it will be too hard to pace myself as both Puffing Billy and Great Ocean Road are hilly courses and hills are definitely not my strong point! Both runs will be good mental and physical training so bring it on!

Bec xx