Safe for now...

Turns out clinicals will be Thursday/Friday either mornings or afternoons every other week. I can handle this. I'd prefer afternoons and I signed my form as such, but there's no guarantee. However, this pretty much means I'm not doing the Tower of Terror race on 10/27. Not really happy about that.

Looking at it from a different perspective, at least right now I'm training and building a good base. I plan on walking part of the Detroit half marathon, right off the bat I'll say it. It's more important for me to do base training right now than jump into a training plan for a half. So I'm going to treat that day like any other day on my plan, do my scheduled plan run, and then walk the rest..or some combination of such. If I feel I can run the whole thing I will, but I'm not going to push it.

I've learned a lot these past couple months. One is that I'm burned out beyond all belief on school. I've slipped from a 4.0 student to a 3.0 this past semester. But I didn't care..it's not going to bring down my overall average enough to make a difference. Two is that although it was a great experience doing the marathon, the euphoria during training (and that damn taper madness) made me sign up for races that I should have known I wouldn't really be ready for. I could say that my marathon training got me in good enough shape that I shouldn't start my plan where I am right now, but my endurance was never really good. I really want to run for the rest of my life..and to do that I need to learn proper form and do things the right way. So I'm kinda pretending that I'm starting from scratch. I started on the 3rd month of the Daniels white plan, since I did at least feel I had enough endurance to do so. And so far this week I have been doing really well. I was supposed to do a planned run tomorrow, but I'm switching my Friday and Saturday workouts so that I can do the running on Saturday with TP (Team Playmakers). So tomorrow I'm just doing some powerwalking for 30 minutes as soon as I'm awake. Then Saturday it's:

5 minutes walking
20 minutes running at easy pace (which I learned is about 13-14 min/miles to keep me below 79% MHR)
5 minutes walking
10 minutes running at easy pac
5 minutes walking

Once I get through 4 weeks of this, then I'll be running 30 minutes straight. I can do so now, actually, and probably could have started on Level IV of the plan, but I really feel where I'm starting is a good place to get my endurance to optimal levels. By January for the Disney half, I should at least be able to run 75% of it if not more. I'm not sure that I'm going to do a full training plan..but from reading the book and estimating time, I should be able to run a lot of it at an easy pace and still finish. I'm going to save PRs and pushing it for after January. I could start an actual half-marathon training plan after January and be ready for the Flying Pig in Cincinnati in May. :)

So enough of me blabbing. My birthday's in 3 days..and I have to go rest my liver for my friend's bonfire tomorrow night. :-D