Week Four Recap

So I've recovered from my Clarks shoes fiasco and managed a second solid/unspectacular week of training. I managed 2 runs: Monday and Wednesday totaling 10 miles and 1 hour,25 minutes. The Wednesday run may have been longer - we did the Sneekers mile - which I covered in 7 minutes 14 seconds - not bad considering I've been pretty slow.

In addition I did 2 yoga sessions totaling about 40 minutes. I also did 3 strength session (core, legs, upper) totaling 25 minutes. Now that doesn't sound great - but Friday was great. I made it down for my first swim at the UConn Avery Point (UCAP) pool. I swam for 39 minutes - and it felt very nice but very hard - like I hadn't swam in 4 months. I plan to go at least once a week - occasionally twice/week. I would've done the pushup/situp workout this weekend - but my upper body was really very sore in protest of that new form of physical activity.

I have 3 more 'easy' weeks in which I hope to continue strength and cross training. Ideally I'd like to get 15 miles in for at least the final 2. Then 1/2-training starts for the Providence 1/2 marathon.

3rd Week Recap

So I seem to have spoke to soon. Week 3 was moving splendidly: I managed to runs for 10 miles after Wednesday - but then my new Clarks (which apparently suck for men) - started hurting my left Achillies and left knee. I was limping around bad at work on Thursday - and skipped my run Friday. Damn Clarks. I have managed almost 1.5 hours each of running and yoga/strength training - so all is not lost - but I'm still looking to get the running back up to the 15-20 mile/week goal - hopefully starting next week. After that - I'll have 2 or 3 more weeks of taking it easy in February before my 1/2-marathon training starts to kick in.

3rd Weeks' the Charm?

We'll see, but it's off to a good start. I've done 46 minutes of strength and yoga work - split about evenly between the two; including one each of core, pushup-situp, legs and upper-body. I also managed a 5.75 mile run yesterday around Noank. So far so good.

I'm starting to get a little pumped for the upcoming race season. It's the year of redemption.

Rough Second Week.

Good thing I don't have a marathon next weekend. I took some time to overcome the sore back I incurred last week. I did my first run with Dave B. on Thursday - 5 slow miles over 45 minutes. ugh. I've managed some short yoga and strength training sessions as well over the last 2 days - and hope to get more in tomorrow in what's looking like a sad week. Sad week - but at least my back's feeling better.

Now I'm lamenting what might have been with a house deal that went through - kind of a dream house - but we needed a series of events to happen that didn't. So now we're back to the drawing board - sitting on my ass watching Man vs. Food and Ghost Hunters. Probably time for bed.

Rough First Week

Well I'm only a little over 1 week into 2010 and it's totally kicking my ass. At 1:00 am Wednesday morning my 3-year old puked on me - and I ended up staying home with the sick kid. I managed to stick to training pretty well - getting in a good workout Wednesday and then I rebounded with a great run Thursday. I decided to do a tempo run - and kicked it in about 1 mile in down by the river. I managed to keep up a ~7 min/mile pace for a little over 2 miles (~2.15 or 15 minutes). I then continued to run another 3 miles (5.8 total). The tempo pace felt hard. But life would get harder.

I started to feel sick Thursday - I was hoping it was just run fatigue - but I got a fever that night and then stayed home all day Friday - mostly sleeping. Saturday I felt better, but then my wife got sick - she was puking most of the morning. Although I felt better, I managed to throw my back out taking out the trash. I scrapped through the day - the kids were very good - thankfully. My back still kills today - so training will have to wait. I did come up with a decent line: "my back's so sore I can hardly wipe my ass." Sounded funny at time.

Half-Day = No Run

So my kid puked on me last night at one in the morning. Which led to me (1) staying home half the day with a sick kid and (2) missing a few hours of sleep; which in turn has caused me to miss my scheduled run. No biggy - that's winter running - always plenty of reasons to miss runs. I'll hope to go out Friday - and have Monday/Friday ~ 1 hour 30 minutes of running - which is pretty weak. I did managed to do: 10 minutes upper body and 10 minutes of legs + 12 minutes of yoga stretching. So that's good. I also may try either hitting the pool or running tonight - we'll see.

The other thing I found was this cool calorie look-up thing. I tried it for today:

1. Breakfast: half-bagel (177) + cream cheese (50) and nutella (60): 287
2. Lunch: ~ 1 Cup Lipton Dry Soup (154) + 4 slices of whole wheat bread with olive oil (~350): 500
3. Snacking: Another Bagel w/cream cheese (450) and 220 calories of Mike and Ikes: 670

That's pretty cool - it also estimated that I'd need to restrict my total daily count to 2600 to maintain my current weight and 2100 to drop to 155. So - that would mean (with a 225 calorie beer) I only have a little over 400 calories to play with at dinner tonight. We'll see...

Winter Break Recap

My goal - post marathon - was to get more flexible, a little stronger and a little lighter. I'm pretty certain I failed at getting lighter since I ate like a horse the entire break. I've been working on flexible - although I think my 3-year old can kick my butt at downward facing dog.

Nevertheless, I managed 2 runs last week: a nice 9-miler last Sunday and a short 3.5 miler last Friday. In addition I did 3 short yoga sessions totaling 52 minutes and 6 8-10 minute strength workouts. I won't document all those workouts moving forward - but it'll be on my google docs page. Hopefully keeping track of it will allow me to be more consistent with it this winter.

Today I kicked off work and 2010 running with a 4+ miler totaling 39 minutes with Larry. I think it'll be a cold winter - so hopefully my friends can keep me going out at lunch.