Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Life, Lewis and the Pursuit of Cross-Training

So it has been a few days since I last posted. Strength training did not happen last Friday. Life, Huey Lewis & The News, and work got in the way. I did get my six miles in on Sunday. I spent the first half of it with my wife as she busted out her new running shoes and her own GARMIN. We covered what I call the 5k loop around the block. It really is more like 3.3 miles, but makes for a nice warmup, run, cooldown. The only downfall to it is there is a lot of concrete sidewalk, some asphalt, and a little bit of dirt/grass along the roadside. I made two laps around the loop, while my wife only did the first lap. She's training for the OKC 5k the same day my sister and I are doing the OKC Half (04/27).

Monday I was hoping to cross-train, but again, life got in the way. Waking up and having to wait at home for the cable guy to arrive, then there was the whole process of setting up my newly installed TiVo, and by the time I got done with all that I had to go do the grocery shopping for the week. Yes, these are excuses. BUT, they are excuses for cross-training. I have still been getting in my runs when they are due. I have not been cheating myself there. It was a bum deal that I did not get to cross-train Monday because I was all jazzed up to do it. You see, in the morning when I did my weigh-in, the scale read back to me a weight of 243. That means I have lost 9 lbs. since I have started my more concentrated effort to get my weight down and train for the Goofy Challenge. I was so pumped I wanted to go pump some iron.

Today, Tuesday, I was only on schedule for 2 miles. I did a total of 5 laps around my condo complex, each lap is .56 miles. The fifth lap was a cooldown lap. Even with the cooldown lap I knocked off about 50 seconds from last week's 5 laps of the complex. That was cool to see since I was not trying to beat any time. Thanks GARMIN for that knowledge. I also managed to do the laps at an overall average pace :07 faster than last week. Another thing I took note of is with each lap I was getting faster. This was the same situation last week, and I was not intentionally trying to make that happen. Again, another GARMIN nicety I have been enjoying. Following today's run around the complex I did do some strength training in the fitness room.

With work tomorrow (Wed.) and another run on Thursday it will be Friday before another cross-training session takes place. That's all for now.

3 comments:

Hayley said...

Huey Lewis & the News really was awesome! And yea for shaving down your time/pace! :D xoxo

Andria said...

I love Garmin you love Garmin? Great to see improvements and encouraging news all around!

What Me Run? said...

I love my garmin too - but I have only just this weekend loaded the software. You would think that a Techie like me would love the numbers and graphs. Maybe it is too much like work. But - I need to see my graphs even out more. Right now they are spikes of speed and slow. I need to get to a pace and stay there for a bit...