Fitness Update

[grandmoffdavid.livejournal.com]

I weighed in this morning to find myself at 215.2, which is not bad considering that I wasn't very good on the diet last week. I weighed in today instead of Monday because I ran a 10k on Sunday and then overindulged the rest of the day. Since having alcohol the night before a weigh in throws off the results, I decided to wait a day. Anyway, pretty happy with that. If I can lose an average of a pound and a half a week until the end of the month, I'll be in good shape for my goal. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure that will happen since I tend to plateau on these things relatively quickly. Hopefully the combination of diet and distance running will help this time.

Speaking of running, I ran the Issaquah Rotary Run 10k on Sunday. This race is the first 10k I ran, so I try and do it every year. The course is pretty good, but gets a bit hilly in the middle. I pushed myself pretty hard on this one, so much so that I was still coughing when I took a deep breath that afternoon. The net result is that I finished in an hour, four minutes, and 29 seconds, which knocks 3:23 off my time from the Covey Run and gives me a pace of 10 min 24 seconds per mile. Not bad, but still not up to my top form. I need to work on speed and hills at some point. The next race up is the Dawg Dash and it's all steep hills.

I've adapted my training regime a bit. A lot of the half marathon training guides I was reading say that you should run four days per week (check), and that you should run four miles, then a medium run, then four miles, and then a long run (lather, rinse, repeat) with the length of the medium and long runs being determined by where you are in the training program. Since I was already running four days per week I decided to increase my minimum run from 30 minutes to 48 (4 miles at 12 minutes per mile) and then do one long run per week where I just go as long as I can. I'm thinking of making that fourth run speed practice. Also, one of the four mile runs is the run with the Sunday crew, which has been just me and covenantscave which makes for a nice relaxing run, but with a variable distance. However, now sadiecaberet has started running again, and given the one run I went on with her recently, she's going to start pushing things a bit more. We'll see.