The Week in Review (09-3-4)

March 29, 2009

Accountability of my progress towards my running goals. I guess that is what this post is really about.

I'm happy to be back on a schedule. It gives me focus in my life to get myself ready for the endurance events that I want to participate in. It makes me feel a sense of pride and accomplishment to work towards an outcome. By posting my results, it holds my feet to the fire to make my future goals a reality ... and should help to keep me motivated to continue.

Mon. 23 MAR: Rest or Cross Training day. An early day at work due to students going through testing. Did the push-ups challenge, week 6, day 1, second column.

Tues. 24 MAR: After an early and late day of work (testing again) I got home and got out for a trail run. 4.4 miles on the fitness trail near my house in a speedy 31:41 at a 7:14 average pace. The trail had some flooded spots, but not bad enough to wash out an entire area.

Wed. 25 MAR: Morning Army PT where I took the guys to the stadium track. I performed 7x400 intervals at between 1:23 to 1:27 each interval. Rest were equal distance rest jogs. Legs felt good, though I had run the intervals just a bit quicker than I should have.

Thurs. 26 MAR: After a mind blowing hard day at work, I nailed down week 6, day 2 of the push-ups challenge. Then I got in a steady state run in the evening (7 PM). Was planning an easy run until I realized how quickly I was going at 4 miles. I kept the pace up and did all 10 miles at a good clip. Time of 1:12:28 at a 7:15 avg. pace was almost 4 minutes faster than the run on the same route on the 21st. Did about 3 minutes of cool down around my court on my return to cool down.

Fri. 27 MAR: Rest/cross training. Rest

Sat. 28 MAR: Rain, Rain and more rain. Performed week 6, day 3 of the push-ups challenge. After the rain finally died out, I went for an easy run to main post. The stadium was flooded, so I turned around and came back. 6.3 miles in 49:02, at an avg. 7:49 pace, which is too quick for an "easy" run. Lessons I need to re-learn: I need to tone it down some for my easy runs.

Sun. 29 MAR: After a bit of waiting to see how the day was going to turn out, I found motivation through all the race reports that people were starting to write from the ING Atlanta Marathon and Half-mary. I hit the road for a long run just before noon. Went off Fort Benning and headed on the River Walk towards the Chattahoochee River. Just as I got to where the Riverwalk goes down by the river, I saw that the water had flooded over the path. So at 6.5 miles out, I had to turn around and came back home on main post the long way adding more mileage. 15.3 miles, and the legs were feeling good, but not like on the steady state run on Thursday. 2 hours and 36 seconds at a 7:53 per mile pace. Again, too fast for the long run. Lessons ... again; I need to slow the hell down!

For the week I logged 39.5 miles and hit 130 miles (with one more running day left) for the month of March, which tells me that I'm finally back on "track." For my fitness goals, I plan on hitting the push-ups challenge week 6 again so that I can improve in this area of my Army Physical Fitness Test.

Another Lesson Learned that I'm going to implement is doing two types of speed work-outs per week, but separating them a bit better. As I have a 10K coming up in April, I want to continue this trend for the next two weeks to see how it may help for April 18th.

Finally, I need to work on slowing my "rate of march" down during long runs to get the maximum benifit out of going long. As I am currently looking at a goal race of a 34 mile ultra in May, speeding through at a sub-8:00 mile will only end up placing me in the hospital!

*I think the Hundred Push-Ups Challenge owes me some advertisment money!