Wednesday
I ran 2.5 miles today. It was a real solid run. With a mile left my mp3 player died. At least this time it wasn't my time piece. I rolled it up and stuffed it in my pocket. I was already in a pretty good rhythm, but I was amazed that after a minute or two it was like my groove had swallowed me. I've been running with music thinking that I needed the distraction. Now I wonder if it's been holding me back. I've never been so in tune with how tight it feels to run down the road. Muscles moving in unison, feet hitting the pavement, breathing in and out. Relentless. That's kind of how it felt. To look back on it now, I don't remember any effort. Next time I run I'm going without the music again. We'll see if I got lucky or if I've been missing out. I finished that last mile in near record pace at 13:16 bringing my total time to 36:20.
Thursday
I did my weights routine, it was uneventful.
Friday Mid-Morning
It's all happening fast. Tuesday I got an email from Jeff about how he really wanted to hook me up with a race. He may live a few states away but he's wiz on the ole intertrons and he had some good ideas for locals I should contact. I did my best to reassure him that there were none close enough and I was fine waiting till next year. That evening after talking to my wife about it I showed her Jeff's email. Apparently he was able to convey something that I had previously been unable to relay. On Thursday she told me that we could try doing a race down state this fall, if there was one available and we could get someone to watch our youngest. It took all of 30 minutes to find and decide on attending this race. There aren't a lot of choices this time of year, but this one is close to some friends of ours *who just happen to be runners*. So I sent them an invite. This morning I got a positive reply from them, they sound down. For some reason though I thought I should go peruse the runmichigan calendar one more time. That's when I found it. Williamsburg.
For some reason it never clicked before. Last night my wife was talking about doctors in Williamsburg. I told her it was close to Traverse City (which is about 45 min away from us).
So right there it was staring me in the face, a race in Williamsburg. Tomorrow! I called my wife, she was surprised but ready to go. I called my friends. They will have to confer and get back to me tonight. If they are in it will be a hell of a drive for them as they live 2 hours south of us. The one thing I didn't see on the race information page was about late registrants, they had nothing. So I emailed the race director. Still waiting for a reply, but I have her phone number so I can call this evening. That brings us to now, anticipation and excitement are at Christmas time levels. Not sure if I'll be running by myself or what, but I'll be there. It's supposed to rain so I hope they don't cancel. I'm planning on moving my walk a mile run a mile to this evening as opposed to running 2.5 miles the day before my first 5k.
Incredible... absolutely incredible.
Showing posts with label groove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label groove. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Weekend Blog Dump
Thursday
Finally today I got back to the 1.5 mile mark, to be exact 1.516 miles. To do it I had to up my running speed from 3.5mph to 3.7mph. Tough going though, my legs wanted to revolt earlier than usual, but I pushed through that noise. My only real concern when I up my level of activity is that I will be able to sustain it in future workouts. I'd hate to go too far and have to go backwards. Slow steady improvement is the best thing for my psyche at this point, doubt is the enemy. I'm taking tomorrow off of work to do something fun so that means my workout will be in the morning instead of my usual time of after work.
Friday
Wow early exercising is certainly not an easy thing to wrap my head around. Got up at the planned 6:30 am time which was actually sleeping in compared to my work get up time of 5:40 am. Felt tired though. About 12 minutes into the workout the ground fault circuit interrupt popped on our wall outlet that the treadmill is plugged into in the basement. It has done this to me once before and is very annoying as I have to stop and go over to the outlet and push a button and then go back to the treadmill and get it going again. I'm not sure why it does this, after the last time I switched to the top plug and it has been a week and a half without an interruption. Not sure what the fix for this will be, I guess I could handle it if it just did it once every two weeks or so. On the bright side I kept up the 1.5 mile pace.
Saturday
Tough going today. I would call this the first time I really didn't want to exercise. I pushed the workout as late as I could cause I just didn't want to do it. The treadmill did it's shut off thing again today. This time it was about 9 miles in. My thinking is that we may just need to have the ground fault circuit interrupt taken off this outlet. I can't keep this exercising up with the treadmill shutting off. A disappointing day even with a 1.5 mile finish.
Sunday
Fixes and firsts were what I needed today. I might as well just go through it as it occurred. After my first set of walking and running I noticed my hands felt sticky holding onto the handle/heart rate monitor (probably from all the sweat I constantly sweat onto them). So I took them off one at a time to wipe them on my shirt. When I took off my left hand one of the silver heart rate monitor panels stuck to my hand and came off the handle. There was a little wire hooked to it so it could only come off about an inch or so. Almost immediately everything clicked and I knew why the machine had been shutting off on me. All of my sweat must have been running under that panel and then running down the wire to a point where it would short out just enough to trip the ground fault circuit interrupt. I was immediately torn, I solved my problem, but how the hell was I going to fix it? I needed those handles to run, or so I thought. About this time my second minute of running came up so I tried to run like a normal person without holding on... and miracle of miracles I didn't fall over. Now I didn't have the most secure stride in the world, but I did it. So then it was on to walking and wow I could do that without holding on as well. So for the rest of the workout I did it like normal person. I had to catch myself a time or two, but that didn't shake my new found confidence and this will be my new routine. I ended up finishing with a new PR in distance for 30 minutes, 1.52 miles. My legs didn't get really painfully tired until about the 20 minute mark so that is better than it has been. I had one other small first, at one point I got into my groove and ran for a minute and 5 seconds. I know this seems a bit ridiculous to mention, but every little step counts when it comes to motivation.
Finally today I got back to the 1.5 mile mark, to be exact 1.516 miles. To do it I had to up my running speed from 3.5mph to 3.7mph. Tough going though, my legs wanted to revolt earlier than usual, but I pushed through that noise. My only real concern when I up my level of activity is that I will be able to sustain it in future workouts. I'd hate to go too far and have to go backwards. Slow steady improvement is the best thing for my psyche at this point, doubt is the enemy. I'm taking tomorrow off of work to do something fun so that means my workout will be in the morning instead of my usual time of after work.
Friday
Wow early exercising is certainly not an easy thing to wrap my head around. Got up at the planned 6:30 am time which was actually sleeping in compared to my work get up time of 5:40 am. Felt tired though. About 12 minutes into the workout the ground fault circuit interrupt popped on our wall outlet that the treadmill is plugged into in the basement. It has done this to me once before and is very annoying as I have to stop and go over to the outlet and push a button and then go back to the treadmill and get it going again. I'm not sure why it does this, after the last time I switched to the top plug and it has been a week and a half without an interruption. Not sure what the fix for this will be, I guess I could handle it if it just did it once every two weeks or so. On the bright side I kept up the 1.5 mile pace.
Saturday
Tough going today. I would call this the first time I really didn't want to exercise. I pushed the workout as late as I could cause I just didn't want to do it. The treadmill did it's shut off thing again today. This time it was about 9 miles in. My thinking is that we may just need to have the ground fault circuit interrupt taken off this outlet. I can't keep this exercising up with the treadmill shutting off. A disappointing day even with a 1.5 mile finish.
Sunday
Fixes and firsts were what I needed today. I might as well just go through it as it occurred. After my first set of walking and running I noticed my hands felt sticky holding onto the handle/heart rate monitor (probably from all the sweat I constantly sweat onto them). So I took them off one at a time to wipe them on my shirt. When I took off my left hand one of the silver heart rate monitor panels stuck to my hand and came off the handle. There was a little wire hooked to it so it could only come off about an inch or so. Almost immediately everything clicked and I knew why the machine had been shutting off on me. All of my sweat must have been running under that panel and then running down the wire to a point where it would short out just enough to trip the ground fault circuit interrupt. I was immediately torn, I solved my problem, but how the hell was I going to fix it? I needed those handles to run, or so I thought. About this time my second minute of running came up so I tried to run like a normal person without holding on... and miracle of miracles I didn't fall over. Now I didn't have the most secure stride in the world, but I did it. So then it was on to walking and wow I could do that without holding on as well. So for the rest of the workout I did it like normal person. I had to catch myself a time or two, but that didn't shake my new found confidence and this will be my new routine. I ended up finishing with a new PR in distance for 30 minutes, 1.52 miles. My legs didn't get really painfully tired until about the 20 minute mark so that is better than it has been. I had one other small first, at one point I got into my groove and ran for a minute and 5 seconds. I know this seems a bit ridiculous to mention, but every little step counts when it comes to motivation.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Forty Five Second Groove
No problems last night relating from the night before when the top of my right foot fell asleep. Continued the 7, 1 minute segments of running. I kept all my walking at 2.7 mph and I'm still running at 3.5 mph.
One thing I did differently for a distraction during last night's workout was that I used my MP3 player as opposed to the laptop with a movie playing. It worked so well that I will be doing this from now on. Not really sure why, but as I have started running the movie option has just been wearing really thin.
The best part about last night was for once I finally found my groove. It was on my fourth or fifth minute of running. I started running and I was just comfortable, incredible. After 45 seconds I wondered how long I had been going and I looked down at the treadmill and saw I still had 15 more seconds to run and all comfort immediately vanished. I was back to reality and 15 more seconds felt like a lifetime. So I learned an important lesson, if I ever find that groove again I'm just going to let it take me as far as it can, no clocks, no time limits, just run comfortable and let the chips fall where they may.
One thing I did differently for a distraction during last night's workout was that I used my MP3 player as opposed to the laptop with a movie playing. It worked so well that I will be doing this from now on. Not really sure why, but as I have started running the movie option has just been wearing really thin.
The best part about last night was for once I finally found my groove. It was on my fourth or fifth minute of running. I started running and I was just comfortable, incredible. After 45 seconds I wondered how long I had been going and I looked down at the treadmill and saw I still had 15 more seconds to run and all comfort immediately vanished. I was back to reality and 15 more seconds felt like a lifetime. So I learned an important lesson, if I ever find that groove again I'm just going to let it take me as far as it can, no clocks, no time limits, just run comfortable and let the chips fall where they may.
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