Getting ready for spring

Now that the calendar has flipped to 2014, it's time to start thinking of a spring race schedule.

I don't have a ton of races on my schedule at this point, actually only two real event: Ragnar Florida Keys in February and the Cellcom Green Bay Half Marathon in May. I might add on a second half marathon (either Oshkosh in April or the Wisconsin Half Marathon the first weekend in May) and there may be a 5K or two sprinkled in. Oh, and I'll be back for Ragnar Chicago in June.

While I haven't set my race schedule in stone, I have given my training schedule a bunch of thought. Mainly I'm not going to slack this year.

After two solid years of chasing PRs in 2011 and 2012, I kind of took a step back last year. My training wasn't so rigid, I may have missed some long runs (OK, a lot of long runs), but I still ran half marathons. The big difference? I wasn't chasing PRs, I was running to have fun with friends. And I did.

But I have the itch to get back to some faster times (well, fast for me anyway) and try to get some new PRs this year.

I know that will take work though and I'm ready to do it.

For starters, when I registered for Green Bay, I took advantage of a deal they had running with RunCoach, an online training program that is customized to each runner and can be tweaked if needed throughout. Normally it runs $20 a month, but through the Green Bay registration process I got 4 months of online coaching for $20. That's a deal to me. My plan starts today with a rest day. But of course, I'll be running since I didn't venture out onto the roads yesterday since they were literally skating rinks.

The next thing I'm going to do is keep up with cross training and strength work.

Since October I've been taking advantage of the free classes offered at my YMCA. I've always found strength work intimidating. I need someone to tell me what to do. So I started going to a P90X class on Monday nights and a cardio abs class on Wednesdays. And I love them. The P90X class doesn't follow the actual program exactly, but the instructor incorporates all of the ideas from the 90 day program into our classes and changes up weekly so it's never been the same class twice and the cardio abs class has a similar P90X feel.

While I'm going to keep going with P90X, I'm changing up my Wednesday night class. Starting last week my YMCA started offering Body Pump. Actual weights work with weight plates and barbells. And so many squats and lunges my legs wanted to cry. Oh, and I totally realized I have absolutely no upper body strength. And I'm also going to try to add a small bit of yoga once a week.

So there you have it. My plan to regain some speed: 4 runs a week, one night of P90X, one night of Body Pump and a little yoga.

Now if only the weather would cooperate so I could run outside instead of indoors on the treadmill or around in circles on the indoor track.