Long Run Sunday

Tuesday (28 March) was the one-year anniversary of starting this crazy habit o' mine. I might have to treat myself to some gear.

And now a PFT Update, as of Friday.

2-mile run: 17:40, for 85 points.
Pushups in 2 minutes: 26 for 71 points.
Situps in 2 minutes: 53 for 69 points.

For a grand total of 225. Still not passing (need 240 points for that), but much improved. Again, pushups seems to be the greatest room for improvement. I'm rather impressed with myself on that 2-mile time. It was definitely a push and I did it without taking my inhaler, too. That's definitely a best time for me. And here's my thing about the situps: you're not allowed to have your feet held or tuck 'em under something, so I feel like my situps are limited by the fact that my feet keep popping up off the floor. I'm not sure how I could do them much faster.

My friend Tim and I are all signed up for Get in Gear. I've switched training programs, so I've been putting in a lot more miles. Where by a lot more miles I mean about an extra mile a day, and about two extra miles on my weekend long run.

Since I ran such a good time in my last 10k, I'm down with running GIG for fun, not for time. Besides, GIG is the largest 10k in Minnesota and it'll be crowded and six miles is not enough room for folks to really spread out. In light of that, I probably don't really need to be running the extra miles, but hopefully getting my base up sooner will give me the endurance and flexibility to run a half marathon sooner in the year.

When I start to add on the mileage, I really start to feel it in my hips. Right along the front. What are those muscles? Hip flexors or something? I figured I ought to be feeling it in my legs, but it's not in my legs. And it's not soreness. They're just tired. I like a little bit of soreness. But my hips just feel tired. Especially since being up north last weekend altered my schedule and I've been trying to play catch up, which meant I ran every single day this week. And which means I'm taking today, my long run day, off. Besides, it's really gross outside. 40° and drippy. If it were warmer I'd love to run in the rain. But it's not.

I'm really enjoying Slow Burn. I was gifted with it from my Amazon wishlist. It gets a bit repetitive, but there's some good information in there. I've already read through all the mental stuff. Now I'm in the meat of the training stuff. And I have yet to read the nutrition stuff. I had read about some of these concepts in the Cool Running forums when I started out, so I think I really had the right approach when starting this running habit from scratch. Namely, I started out slow.

Also in the CR forums I came across DJ Steveboy's Podrunner. Each mix is at a fixed BPM, so you can pick one to match how slow or fast you want to go. I've only run once while listening to it. I found the 150 BPM mix to be too slow, but the music was still good to listen to. Sometimes it's nice to have a good beat that you can zone out to. The 180 BPM mix was great for keeping my feet moving. 180 steps/min is supposedly the optimal cadence for running efficiency (and biking as well). It was a funny little shuffle, because I was trying to keep the cadence, but I was also not trying to go very fast, so I was talking these really short, quick steps. But I was comfortable, and that's all that matters. There are other mixes at other speeds that I haven't downloaded yet. They're really long, about an hour each. The Groundpounder mix — the 180 BPM one — is two hours. They'll be better for when I get to longer runs and into marathon training where your long run is two or three hours.

And it's finally warming up some. It's been a little dreary, but I haven't had to keep it indoors and go to the Y in weeks.