This Week in Training

Or not in training. Marathon plan starts October 4th, so the weight loss plan is in full effect until then. I'm hoping to minimize the impact on my knees and ankles. I'm having some pain in my lower shins too that has been lingering since the race on saturday. Maybe I pushed a little too hard on the new course. Or maybe it's time for some new running shoes.

I've been thinking about my time on the track team lately. As a freshman in high school in 1990 - OMG was that really 18 years ago? - I ran the mile in every match. Sophmore year I threw shotput and discus. But since I was 6' tall and only 120 lbs at the time I didn't think I was very good at either. I really was out of my league with the shotput, the iron weighed more than I did. But my worst mile time was 6:10 and my best was 5:50.

Now I know there's a big difference between 120 lbs and the 203 the scale told me yesterday. But I was really happy with the 10 minute pace from the race saturday. Also, you don't find 33 year old men that weigh 120 lbs. But how much does my current weight affect my run times? A six minute mile seems INSANE to me right now. And I felt bad back in the day because I always finished the races in last place. Like 10 or 12 races on the track team and I never beat anybody from my own or any other school as a miler. I just was in it to have fun and get outside and run. I wanted to play a sport as a high schooler and that was it. I was a wide receiver on the freshman football team too, but I never was thrown a pass much less made a catch. So that was frustrating.

But at least my track streak is still intact. I finished last in the Novice category at the Greenville Tri and last in my age group at the Ache race. And I'm still happy with my results. And I'm still happy just to be outside running and playing a sport. And that's really all that matters.

I know we are supposed to put distance before time but I'm getting anxious to find out how to safely increase pace times, and to see how fast I can get for say a 5k race next year. My current PR in 5k is 32 mins from the Greenville Tri. So how big of an impact can weight loss have on pace times? And what is your favorite technique for getting faster? And finally, how long do you want to be able to go before starting to work on speed?

Yesterday's workout was 1 hour on the elliptical machine at the gym. I like doing weight loss workouts there because the machine told me I went 7.5 miles and burned 700 calories in 60 minutes. Today is supposed to be cross training, I'm thinking 30 mins on the stationary bike, 30 on the treadmill and maybe a longish bike ride outside if work time allows. Tomorrow will be an hour on the treadmill or several miles outside, and I'll post on friday.