President’s Day Shenanigans

Today, I would have to say, has been a pretty nice day. Very productive, in my mind anyway.

It started with an amazing breakfast. A “heart healthy” bowl of oatmeal with a spoonfulof peanut butter, raspberries, blueberries, banana, and honey accompanied by two cups of bulletproof coffee.

I don’t know if the coffee is that healthy for you or not. The blog says that it is very good for you, but I just felt as if I was drinking a whole ton of cholesterol and clogging my arteries. I did like the taste and perhaps it could be a treat every once in a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then I had this itch to go for a bike ride. So I did. Turned out to do 15 miles, and boy was it a trek! The wind was crazy strong no matter what direction I went in. I often felt as if I was just standing still on the bike!

After the bike ride I went to Track Shack and updated my shoes. I was in desperate need of new shoes. Good bye Beats 1.5 and hello Beasts 2.0. I was experiencing odd knee pain and also some shin split feeling pain. Time to trade in.

Beasts 1.5

Beasts 2.0

I gave my Beasts the 1.5 designation as the first beasts I owned I modified just a bit to add more cushion to the tongue. I have not decided if I am modding the next generation yet or not. Right now they are fitting like gloves and my knee pain is completely gone!

Then, it was off to strength train at the Y. Here is what I did:

Seated leg curl – 70 x 3/10

Leg extension – 70 x 3/10

Hip abductor – 80 x 3/10 ??

Hip adductor – 80 x 3/10 ??

Back extension –  80 x 3/10 ??

Dead lifts – 25 x 3/10

Single leg Step-ups – 10 x 3/10

Side step-up w/ kick – 10 x 3/10

Push ups 10

Balance board squats – 3/10

Planks – 3/1:00

Stretcher – back, glutes/piriformis, calves

I did all of my note taking on my iPhone. The first number is usually a weight and then it is how many reps of 10 that I performed. The question marks indicate that I may want to increase the weight next time as it was just a bit easy.

Training Starting to Take Shape

Slowly things are starting to take shape with my running routine.

A goal is to up my weekly milage. Currently it looks like my average mile per week has gone from 20 to 30 since I started marathonfest. I am very happy with this current amount.

Mondays – Rest (yoga day)

Tuesdays – Speed work (averaging 8 miles)

Wednesdays – (Have to come up with a name for this day….you’ll see why later in this post)

Thursdays – Speed work or Tempo run (averaging 8 miles)

Friday – Rest

Saturday or Sunday – Long run and Cross Training (one on each day not both on both days)

Back to the Wednesday thing. I was not going to run on wednesday this week, but I got home from work and just had this major itch to get out. I did not want to run a certain milage or a pace so instead I decided I would run for a length of time. I set my timer for 30 minutes and began running away from home. When the timer rang I turned around. This was one of the most liberating experiences I have had on my runs in a while. I really enjoyed just running as far as I could in the 30 minute time frame without any other goal but to run. It turned out that I ran for 1 hour (my initial goal) at a 9:15 pace per mile! and logged 6.76 miles! I was very pleased with the result and there was no goal other than to run for an hour. The speed work really has paid off. I had no fatigue during this run at all.

My goal for Wednesdays will be to maintain or add 1 or two minutes to my going out time. So next week I’ll run away from the house for either 31 or 32 minuets. So now for a name….I need a name for my Wednesdays that has some poetry to it. I was thinking Wandering Wednesdays or Where do I get Wednesdays, or WDW (where’s david wednesdays)…

On my Wednesday run I also tried a Chia drink mixture. This could have helped with the whole fatigue issue. It is great stuff. I could feel the instant energy boost. The only downside to drinking the mixture was that it also kept me up all night because it was so late when I drank it. I am excited to try the drink out again tomorrow for my 10 mile Saturday run. My plan is to mix the drink before the run. Drink all 10 oz before heading out and seeing what it does.Thursday’s tempo run was about 5 miles and turned out to be about a 9:09 pace per mile. Again, here I did not feel as if I was pushing my self very hard to make this pace. I was just keeping up with the group and could hold nice conversations the whole time. I think I need to start pushing my self a little more on the speed work days and see if I can cut out another minute from my easy runs. But I also don’t want to push things too much!

Sunday there is a 5 mile trail run that I would love to do, but I don’t know if I should add those miles to my week and I don’t really have an old pair of shoes to wear and get ruined. So the jury is still out on attending that run.

Sunday Night Recap 2/5/12

Thursday morning ran 5 miles of hills in Winter Park. It was a beautiful morning and I really enjoyed the run! Our group keeps getting larger! We did two hill repeats.

Friday was a rest day.

Saturday we ran 10 miles! It was great. we started at 4:45 am and ran at about 9:51 pace. Our group started out real small, about 5 people, and by the end we had collected another 8 or so! We kept collecting people as we passed the water station and people were joining in for different distances. Our pace keeper, Ed, is really nice. He is a physical therapist I think. I made a big announcement in the run, STRETCH AFTER RUNNING TODAY!, we don’t want any injures.

Apparently marathonfest can have a 50% dropout rate due to injury! His goal is to keep his really large “cool” group together for the whole season. I like that goal. I am working very hard to stay injury free.

That brings us to today SUNDAY!

Today I had a real tough time getting motivated to get out…but I did. I did a 45 minutes of strength training and then aqua jogged for 30 minutes. It was a great workout!

Strength training included: 3 sets of 12 reps of each exercises: Quad extensions, ham string exercise, deadlifts, step ups, step up and kicks, squats on a balance board, hip flexing and unflexing (I’m sure that there is a real term for this…), back strengthening. I performed 3 sets of 1 minute planks and then aqua jogged 50 second intervals for 30 minutes.

It was a  great day! Tomorrow, Monday, will also be a rest day. I hope that I am not REAL lame after this workout…a little pain is ok…no pain no gain!