Thursday, August 27, 2009

Week 3 - Day 1, 2, & 3 (Tough but Cool)

Week 3 instruction: Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then do two repetitions of the following: Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes), Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)

Week 3 went well, especially given the cooler temps on Day 2 and 3. Ahhh, sweet relief! C stayed true to her word and went with me all three times. I took River with me on Day 3 for the warmup and half of the jog/walk portion.

We were able to do all the jogging intervals in their entirety but the 3 mins were hard on me. C seemed to be having a lot less trouble. Our days were screwed up (we did two days in a row because we were busy all weekend) and our days will be screwed up this next week as well, so we are going to re-do week 3. Also, it will give me a chance to work on getting better at the 3 min intervals.

Day 1 – 8/20
Run time: 25:22
Run Distance: 1.57 miles
Ave Pace: 16:10/mi
Temp: Hot and humid

Day 2 – 8/24
Run time: 30:55
Run Distance: 1.77 miles
Ave Pace: 17:30/mi
Temp: Cooled off a bit and a nice cool breeze

Day 3 – 8/25
Run time: 26:29
Run Distance: 1.64 miles
Ave Pace: 16:06/mi
Temp: Still cooler but no breeze

Not sure what was up with our slow pace on Day 2. That felt like our best day even though I was very tired on the 3 min jogs. It felt like we went much slower on Day 3 but I guess I am delusional :)

Still no unusual pain. My weird thigh pain has not come back and my knees are doing great. My shins hurt a lot less than they did back in the spring too. Not sure if I’m doing something differently but it’s nice.

Each day we do a bunch of stretches after our 5 min warmup and then again, for a longer time period, at the end. At the end I also do ~60-80 crunches and, just this week, I added in ~25 wall push ups. (Yeah, I tried to do a real push up. It wasn’t pretty.) My upper arms and chest have been sore so they must be doing something. I plan to continue and up the count every week. Hopefully I’ll eventually be able to graduate to actual on-the-ground push ups.

I’m sad that summer is almost over but I’m really looking forward to running in the fall weather.

3 comments:

  1. I'm going to have to start with the wall pushups as well - so sad considering I used to do pushups all the time (in the Army, of course).

    I can imagine you will feel a lot better running in the cooler fall temps!

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  2. Way to stick with it!! Remember to stretch your calves and ice your shins.

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