Weekend O' PR's

Friday
An uneventful run. I stayed on course and did the same plan as yesterday. I am totally sold on this routine. For me it just feels right. I know I get a good workout and just when I need a break it shifts back to 90 seconds walking and 90 seconds running, which is cake at this point.

Saturday
My wife and I took our oldest daughter (2) to the John Ball Park Zoo today with some friends, so I wasn't sure what I'd be able to do as far as a workout goes. I also had planned to do a longer total workout tomorrow. The zoo was about 2 hours of walking and it is on the side of a hill, so the stroller made it extra fun. We got home in the afternoon and I took a little siesta. I did my best not to actually fall asleep knowing that would spell demise for my pending workout. I was able to rise from the dead at some point and summon enough energy/wakefullness to get ready to run. My plan was two-fold: 1. See how far I could run, no walk breaks; 2. Attempt to run as much of a mile as possible. I am so slow I often question the value of a warm-up for me at this point in my training. I decided the best way to help myself complete my goals would be to bump my speed down from 3.7 mph to 3.5 mph and cut out my usual 90 second warm-up walk. The first .4 miles where the toughest just because I knew how disappointed I would be in myself if I were to take a walk break then (Having completed this distance in straight running about two weeks ago when I tried something similar). It was tough on my body, but it was probably tougher on my mind. Somewhere after .5 miles I got the feeling that I could actually pull it off and that is all I really needed to do it. 17:08 from starting I had RUN a mile. I know it's slow, but I ran the whole thing which felt like a giant PR. For the first time in my life I ran a mile. Even when I was young and I would run in gym class I never actually RAN a whole mile, there were always walk breaks. I was on such a cloud afterward that I wasn't even upset about Michigan losing.

Sunday
Last night we ended up drinking with some friends so I wasn't sure how today would work. After being awake for a few hours though I felt fine and decided today would be ok to try the long workout idea. My plan, as I put in an earlier entry, is to add 6 minutes to my long run each week until I get it up to about an hour. It was a little daunting going into this since 30 minutes usually takes about all I have. I decided to bump my speed down from 3.7 mph to 3.5 mph just to give myself the best opportunity to finish. I think the biggest help is that I do have an excel spreadsheet of all the times printed out and taped on the treadmill, so I could tell myself that I only had x amount of run breaks left. I ended up finishing fine, I even thought to myself that I could have done more if I had to. My mileage for the day ended up being an obvious PR of 1.89 miles with 20:30 running out of 36 minutes. Oh and I've started calling my run segments run breaks, just as a little psychological warfare. I was really happy with how yesterday and today went together. I think it is important to go a little easier before the longer day. As I have yet to find a cross-training activity, I think the mile run is good for an easy day. I can either work on adding speed or a tenth of mile and have it contain some kind of progression but still not make me fatigued for the following day. Ideally I can find a used exercise bike here in the next couple weeks to make me feel better about taking running rest days.