Back at it

After taking the winter off and ballooning to 196 lbs, I got a spot in the lottery for the St. George marathon. I started training this morning with a slow 3.38 miles.

Sunday long run

On my eighth consecutive day of running, I did a 9-miler. I was trying to run very slow and easy. Most of the miles were in the 11:30 range.

That got me to 23.76 miles for the week, which is by far my biggest week since the marathon.

Vacation running

I'm on vacation in CA, running every day. Because of very cold water (60F), my swim party skipped the pier-to-pier. It was so cold that the race organizers decided to allow wetsuits, but we didn't know about it.

Anyway, I have now run five consecutive days. Saturday I did some intervals and sprints at the track for about 3.5 miles. Monday was only 2.17 miles, but included a big hill. Tuesday I did two miles of "trail" running. All hills and uneven ground in my Five Fingers. Wednesday another 2.57 including some of the same trail running, but in running shoes. And finally today was 4.80 miles of intervals on the track.

Long swim

I did the longest continuous swim that I've ever done in a pool last night. I went 2 miles. (141 lengths) It took about an hour, but I didn't note exactly when I started so I'm not sure just how long it was. No repeat of the hand cramping/failure of the week before, so I think I'm good to go for the pier-to-pier.

Decathlon

I started a "decathlon" with the other developers at work, and I have completed all the events except one. These are the events:

200m dash - I did this this morning after my mile, and ran a 36.43. That's almost but not quite world record pace in the marathon, and I was giving it everything I had in a sprint.

1 mile - Today's 7:32 is my best in a long time. I seem to think I did some miles faster than this back in Fremont. But I'm not entirely sure.

10k - I ran a 54:53 back in mid-May, which is my best ever.

200yd freestyle - Went 2:37 this evening. A bit better than I expected, as I was thinking that about 40 sec / 50 yards would be my best.

Pull-ups - I can't say I have completed this one because I was unable to do a pull-up.

Push-ups - 15. I was disappointed with this.

Wall sit - 1:24. I had no idea how difficult this would be.

Standing broad jump - 68 inches. I think with some technique practice I could do better.

Jump rope (1 minute, rope rotations) - 57. Terrible. I don't have the timing down very well, my rope was too light weight, and I kept snagging it on my foot and having to restart. I think a bit of practice will bump this up a lot.

Stair climb - 51.04 seconds. We work on the 8th floor, so this is from the 1st to the 8th. The first 4 floors were very easy. The last one was not.

Blister! Ow!

I set out to do 6 miles this morning. On the way out, I decided to extend it to 8 miles. At the turnaround, I was at about 9:45 pace, and I wanted to kick up the pace to average 9:30 for the whole run. I clicked off a 9:17, a 9:02, and an 8:58. But there was a building pain on the outside edge of my right foot. Just after passing the 7 mile mark, I gave up, took my shoes off, and walked the last mile home.

I have a large blister on my foot. This is the first blister I have had in the last several years. There did not seem to be any folded spot in my sock or anything else out of place. So I have just kicked the Nike Frees off my preferred running shoes list. I'm going back to my Asics.

Swim win

I did the same swim workout as before this evening: 12x100 on 1:40 until failure, then dropping to 2:00. The last two times I have failed on the fourth. This time I made all 12 on 1:40. After the first at 1:30 flat, I did most of them at 1:35 to 1:37. I even managed to kick my way to a 1:32 on the last one. Booyah!