Thursday, February 10, 2011

Reflections on Week 3

As I wind down the third week of my official, structured training, I would like to summarize how I feel that I am doing and give you my personal evaluation. Before that, let me recap my latest workouts since my last post.

For now, Mondays are a day of rest from running or biking. This past Monday I did my P90X workout-"Chest, Shoulders, and Arms" and "Ab Ripper X." I always like the way these upper body P90X workouts make me feel. I continue to notice muscle development as I stick with these workouts. These workouts will ultimately pay off during races like Xterra where I have to carry my bike up the stairs many times and during the SM100 when I have to push and carry my bike a lot.

As I increase my mileage and the amount of time I spend training, I have less time for other things. Since I pack a lot of miles into my weekend, I am often quite tired by Monday. Sometimes this tiredness carries over to Tuesday. Also I have been spending more time in the mornings preparing my food for the day so I can have a healthy meal at lunch. The extra tiredness and the extra time spent in the morning preparing food means I sometimes need a few extra winks and then don't have time to workout before work. This past Tuesday was one of those days. I slept in until 6:30 and therefore did not have time for my Tuesday morning cycle on the trainer.

As Tuesday wore on, I decided that I would go ahead and do my cycle after work and then do my tempo run. That would be a big workout but I was pretty pumped up about the idea and made sure to fuel properly during the day so I could pull it off. After work, I got right to it and did my 30 minute Spinervals and then did my 50 minute tempo run. For my tempo run, I started the run off relatively slow-about a 9:15 to 9:30 minute per mile pace and ran this pace for 10 minutes. Then at the 10 minute mark, I increased my pace and ran for 30 minutes at a much faster pace-right around a 7 to 7:15 minute per mile pace. After my 30 minutes at a fast pace, I slowed down for the last 10 minutes to cool down. You can see the details below by clicking on either "Untitled" or "View Details" on the map below. Just click the Back button on your browser to come back to my blog or wait until the end of the blog to review the maps. You can always click the Back button to come back.


I felt pretty good about this run. Considering this is only my third week of training and I still have a long way to go until the 10K, I am pretty confident I can PR (beat 46.01) and I may even give my nephew Chad a run for his money. His time in last years 10K was super fast but he is in college now and I am hoping that the ice cream will slow him down a bit so I can beat him. Honestly it does not really matter but I make up goals just to motivate me. I actually hope he has a great race and does very well. I wish that for everyone!

On Wednesday we had our Pro K swim in the morning. I was a little tired from the Tuesday night workouts but I felt like I had a great practice. We did a lot of sprinting which is always a challenge. It is hard to go fast and not have my stroke fall apart. I am still the slowest one in the class. After work on Wednesday, I ran my easy 4 miler.

My training schedule calls for speed work on Thursdays. Melissa and I went to the track so we could get our speed work in. She did her tempo run and I did my 8X400s. This is the first time I have done speed work with my Garmin. Technically, I probably included too many extra seconds of rest in between my 400s. Resting refers to slowing down to a jog between 400s. It does not mean that I stop running. My resting laps were slightly longer than my repeats and I slowed down with each resting lap. You can see the details below. After you click "View Details" on the map below, you can click "View Splits" to see the details of my laps. Again, you click click the Back button in your browser to come back to this page or wait until the end of the blog to check out the stats. After our speed work, we did Ab Ripper X.

Overall I feel really good about my training. I have two more weeks of building before I do a recovery week where some of my mileage will go down and I will try to get some extra rest. I also have my doctors appointment next Friday afternoon so I will get off work early for that and that will be like a little half day off. I am looking forward to that.

I think the swimming is really paying off. My body is learning to work harder with less oxygen and as I adapt, it seems to be making me able to run faster. This weekend, I plan to get an extra day of cycling in. The weather is supposed to be really nice. I may try for a long ride on Sunday-longer than the 20 milers I have been doing. We'll see. I also have yard work to do so I am just not sure yet. I still have issues with my knee but stretching and strength training as well as the cycling and swimming seem to be helping.

Anyway, thanks for reading. You are now up to date.





2 comments:

allenq said...

I clicked on "details" and I was impressed with how much detail the Garmin develops for the user. I assume you just upload to your computer via a USB and then print it out or view it.
One question I had. For things like calorie count, heart rate, etc.,does the Garmin accumulate data over several performances and average it out to determine what zone you are achieving, or is the zone rating specific to a single performance only?
You are going strong! The knees are the only slight cloud on the horizon, but hopefully the regular workouts you are doing will iron that out.

Jim Rosen said...

Zones are shown as an average per workout but also there is a graph that shows zones per minute or mile. These are also per workout.