219.5 this morning when I woke up and 218 after evening run.
I tried something different today.
I have been thinking for a little while that I need to do something to shake up my weight and getting it moving in the proper direction a little quicker. Besides a few weak moments and a few meals eaten out in the past couple weeks my weight has been moving generally in the right direction but not as quickly as I would like. I also wanted to look at starting to push up the miles but it would be very difficult to add extra time to my evening runs right now with various family responsibilities.
To take a shot at tackling both of these things I decided to give double runs a shot. My plan is to do short (just over 2 miles) runs in the morning before work and continue following the remainder of the training plan with evening and weekend runs.
I don’t fully have the plan worked out yet and it will have to be pretty fluid as I watch to see how I am feeling physically and mentally. Physically I have watch for aches and pains that don’t go away because they will give me a warning of possible injuries coming and if this causes an injury then the concept was a mistake. I will have to watch for exhaustion as well – if my body won’t let me push hard on speed days or if I am dragging too bad on long run days I will need to back off. Mental exhaustion will be something to be wary of too – it could potentially start to feel like all I am doing is running and that could lead to burn out pretty darned quick.
So current plan is to do the just over 2 mile runs outside in the morning Monday through Friday before work and then treadmill work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the evening and then morning runs outside on Saturday and Sunday with Sunday being the long runs. My main plan is the Tues-Thurs treadmill runs and the Sat and Sun outdoor runs so if the morning runs during the week start to impact my ability to follow the plan on those other runs then the morning runs will need to be eliminated or adjusted. If I do have to make a change I would probably look at shutting down either Monday and Friday morning runs to give the 2 rest days or Monday and Tuesday morning runs to give a rest day and providing a longer breaker before the speed work on Tuesday night. The first real test will be tomorrow morning…we’ll see if the alarm clock ends up through the wall or if I end up on the road!
So this morning took some convincing but I got out there and did 2.09 miles in 18:33 – it felt pretty good even though I was pretty tired. It was dark out there and I’m not used to running outside in the dark so I may have to look at making sure I am wearing enough light coloured clothing and maybe some reflective stuff. Pretty quiet out there though and it was very peaceful – it was also nice to not run with the Garmin watch on my wrist reminding me of my speed – without it on I was able to just go with how I felt and still did decent for that time of the morning!
It was unseasonably warm today so I was able to get in the pool for about an hour after work / before supper and did 4 sets of resistance exercises while I was in there. Also got a bunch of additional exercise throwing our daughter around the pool – throwing her over my head, throwing her like a ball (her idea) and throwing her like a spear (no really, her idea – she’s kind of crazy).
After supper we had a bunch of shopping to do with a lot of walking. By the time we got home and the kids to bed it was getting later than I typically like to get on the treadmill but I knew I had to give it a go so I sucked it up and got going.
I figured I would have a bit of rough run due to the morning run, time in the pool and lots of walking while shopping but in the end it was a pretty good run. 4.03 miles in 30 minutes after a 2.5 minute warm up at 10% incline. Not my fastest 30 minute run but faster than any of my equivalent runs last week which was a bit of surprise. I did the first 15 minutes by alternating 1 minute periods at 7 mph with 2 min periods at 9 mph – I then did a minute of walking and then went into cycles of 1 min at 9 mph and 1 min at 7 mph. Cycles fell with the last minute being 7 mph so I bumped the last 30 seconds to 9 mph to finish strong. It felt pretty good and I was rarely tempted to cheat by grabbing the hand holds so all in all it was a pretty good run. So after one day it looks the double runs are ok…? Probably too early to decide
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