Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Here I Am!!! 1/25/06

In case anybody is wondering, I came in second in the Trail Runner Magazine Championship Series. In August, my office announced a promotional exam that required some intense studying. The test was 11/5/05 and I scored a 97%. Unfortunately, I did a lot of sitting during those months. It's too bad there weren't any "Couch Potato" magazines sponsoring a Lethargic Championship Series during that time, because I certainly would have finished well.
This year, I've set some goals for myself: first and foremost I want to break through the 3:20 marathon plateau. My last two races have been 3:20:14, Death Valley Marathon in December 2004 and 3:20:20, Vancouver International Marathon in May 2005. It would also be nice to run a 5K under 20 minutes and get my weekly mileage back up to about 50 miles a week. Some non-running goals include doing more yoga, getting to work on time, and sleep, sleep and more sleep - at least more than 5 hours a night for a change. (Note, I manipulated the clock so the time listed at the bottom is not accurate because let's just say it's really early o'clock A.M. and I have not yet gone to bed!)
In order to achieve these goals, I've begun doing both Track/Speed as well as Core/Pilates workouts twice a week. Fortunately, an angel coach has graciously agreed to take me under his wing for the speed workouts. I still have the same amazing Core trainer and I wisely found a wonderful sports massage therapist. So now that I have the Coaching "Dream Team" in place, all I have to do is follow the Nike slogan and "Just Do It."
Since January 1st, my schedule has looked like this:

SUNDAY: Either hill repeats in sand (see pictures below) or long tempo run.
MONDAY: OFF (unless you count hockey practice in the evening)
TUESDAY: Speed/Interval workout.
WEDNESDAY: easy 4 mile recovery run, and an hour of Core/Pilates.
THURSDAY: Speed/Interval workout.
FRIDAY: easy recovery run, about 4 miles; 1 hour pre-game nap, ice hockey game in the evening.
SATURDAY: Long trail run with the Santa Monica Mountain Goats, then straight to the studio for an hour and a half of Pilates/Core, then a massage.

The part of the plan that isn't quite in place yet is more regular early morning DVD yoga sessions. Hopefully that will work itself out once I start routinely going to bed before today becomes tomorrow!
Since I've been on this schedule, my mile time has dropped from 6:25 to 6:19. Of course, my body has been a bit crankier, but again nothing a little extra sleep can't fix.

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That is not a real smile, because I really
didn't feel like smiling at that moment!

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100 meters long with an altitude
increase of 100 feet (six repeats).

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The smoke coming from my calves is not visible in
the photo, but I'm smiling through the pain.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There's a significant list of goals in this posting.

And what's the status of this list today? Hmmm? Detroit, 3:19, BABY! AWWWW YEAH!

-Zo