The First Day of Training!

For anyone that is walking with me in the Boston 2010 Komen 3 Day for the Cure, today marks the official kick off for the recommended 24 week training plan!  I suppose that technically, the kick off is tomorrow, since Mondays are always rest days.  But it's supposed to rain here in Atlanta later this week (AGAIN!), so I started today.  It's good to get a jump on things!

So today was my first official training walk of the 2010 3 Day season.  I say official because I walk pretty regularly with my dog and we often walk for at least three miles, the "starter distance" for the 3 Day training schedule.   Because of that, I'm not expecting these first two to three weeks to be too tough on the 'ol legs and feet.  But I know from experience that things get a lot more challenging really quickly, so I'm enjoying these easier walks while I can.

 

All the essentials of 3 Day training!

My dog was particularly excited to get started on training.  I have an old 3 Day bandana from the 2007 3 Day that she has worn for almost all of our training walks over the years.  She knows exactly what it means when that bandana comes out - we're definitely going for a walk and hopefully it'll be a nice long one.  She gets all squirmy and excited as soon as she sees it.  Seeing her excitement for training really gets me excited as well.  For this first walk, we also broke out our super special pink ribbon leash, which you can see in the picture above.  I've had this leash for over a year and this is the first time we've used it!

My training partner Shenanigans, all ready to go in her pink bandana

For our first training walk of the year, we decided to hit up Piedmont Park, which is Atlanta's version of Central Park.  The park is big and beautiful, with Lake Clara Meer right at the center.  It's also one of my favorite places in Atlanta.  Since it's just up the street from my house, it's a great place to train for the 3 Day.  It was a beautiful February day today and I couldn't help but take pictures of the park during our walk.

Piedmont Park in February

Shenanigans checking out Lake Clara Meer

Despite my playing amateur photographer during our walk, Shenanigans and I were actually making  pretty good time on our training walk.  However, shortly after our stop at the lake, Shenanigans decided that walking just wasn't exciting enough for her.  She thought it would be much more fun to start running around like a crazy dog, so she took off like a rocket running through the field.  She also found a five month old puppy to play with for a bit.  As this was our first training walk of the season, I let her play until she got tired.  I just hope that she gets more serious about our training on our future walks - I've got 60 miles to get through at the end of this!

Shenanigans running like the wind (L) and playing with her new friend (R)

Eventually, we were able to get back to our training walk, which we managed to finish in 53 minutes, even with our distractions.  All told, we covered 3.3 miles today.  I was feeling pretty good when we got back home, but poor Shenanigans was beat.  All that extra running and playing really wore her out.  She may need a few more training walks to remember how to pace herself.  But hey, I'm just glad that I have such an enthusiastic training partner.  What fun is training by yourself all the time?

My awesome training partner

I have a lot more to say about the importance of training, but I'm going to save that for future posts.  I've also picked up some great tips both from my experience and from other walkers that I'm looking forward to sharing with everyone.  But for now, I just want to enjoy the successful completion of my first training walk of the 2010 3 Day season!

If you're interested, you can see all of the pictures from today's training walk over on my Picasa page.  In addition, I have also uploaded a copy of the 24 week suggested training program and my personal training tracking worksheet on Google Docs for anyone to use.  Over the years, I've found that being able to record my training walks all in one place is a great way to track my progress and stay focused on training, so I highly recommend printing a copy of the training worksheet to record your training as you prepare for the 3 Day.

Good luck fellow walkers and may your first training walks be as enjoyable as mine!