Messing around

Posted on February 13, 2012 by jt

I’m not sure why I didn’t just run my 3 miles and be done with it. For some reason I decided to mess around with different ladders of intensity. I started off at 4 mph for 2 minutes, then 5 mph for 2 minutes, then 6 mph for 2 minutes, then 7 mph for 2 minutes, then back down to 6 for 2, 5 for 2, and 4 for 2. That took me to 1.2 miles, but not extremely quickly, and it was fairly taxing on me. For my second mile I started at 8 mph for 2 minutes, then 7 mph for 2, 6 for 2, 5 for 2, and then 4 mph for the final 2 minutes, giving me an average speed of 6 mph for 10 minutes or exactly 1 mile. Again, it was harder than it should have been. After that I just set it to 4.0 mph and walked for 30 minutes (another 2 miles).

The push-ups were difficult today. That actually surprised me. I had planned on increasing my output from last week, but after feeling the pain today, I decided to keep it to 100 per day.

Week one

Posted on February 10, 2012 by jt

Today was brutal. I couldn’t run at all. I did walk 50 minutes at 4.0 mph, but it felt like somewhat like cheating. Hopefully next week won’t be as rough. Even the push-ups were rough today. I barely finished that first set of 40. The sets of 30 were still pretty easy.

Time at mile 1.0: 15:05
Time at mile 3.0: 45:05

Push-ups: 40, 30, 30

Weekly Totals:
17.5 miles
500 push-ups

Day four

Posted on February 9, 2012 by jt

Today was significantly more difficult to run than the past few days. I barely made it through the first mile, and even that wasn’t fast. I walked at 4.0 mph until I crossed 4.0 miles, but felt pretty crappy the whole way.

The time has come for me to get some new shoes. My right foot has started falling asleep during my longer runs. The shoes I have are at least 10 years old now, which is just crazy. It’s not that I’m too cheap to spend the money on some new shoes, I’m just too lazy to go waste time trying on all the different creations that have come out in the past 10 years. If I ever do make it to a shoe store, I’m going to buy 3 or 4 pair so I don’t have to go back for a long time.

So I was content thinking my shoes were the big reason I had such a hard time today, until I logged my progress and realized I had skipped a very important step this morning. I normally drink a Red Bull about 10 minutes before I start my run and I completely forgot to do that this morning. I think that played into the poor performance more than I’d like to admit. I’ll make sure to drink one before running tomorrow.

Time at mile 1.0: 9:12
Time at mile 4.0: 54:12

Push-ups were easy again today, so I mixed it up a little and moved my hands closer together on the final set. That certainly changes which muscles are doing the work. I’ll have to play with that some more in the next few weeks.

Push-ups: 40, 30, 30

Slightly faster

Posted on February 8, 2012 by jt

I pushed a lot harder through my first mile today, but only managed to go a very small amount faster. I guess that’s the way it goes. I crossed the 1.0 mark at 8:41. I was happy with that outcome, but I was expecting to be faster than that. There’s always tomorrow. After that I got into a nice rhythm of 2 minutes each at 4.0 and 6.5 mph. After crossing 3.0 I walked for another 20 minutes, so my final distance was over 4.0 miles, but I’ll just count it as 4.0.

Time at mile 1.0: 8:41
Time at mile 3.0: 31:34
Total distance: 4.0 miles

Push-ups were easier today than yesterday. I may need to increase my goal sooner than later.

Push-ups: 40, 30, 30.

Day two.

Posted on February 7, 2012 by jt

Day two of this round. I sent a fairly inflammatory email right before leaving for lunch today. I was pretty upset and tried to turn that into a good run. It sort of worked. I ran my first mile under 9:00, but my phone was ringing off the hook, so I paused my running to see what all the fuss was about. It was about the email I sent, so I turned the ringer off and got back on the treadmill. I had a hard time getting back up to speed, but eventually started alternating 2 minutes at 4 mph, 2 minutes at 6.5 mph. I crossed the 3.0 mile mark around 32 minutes, which is much better than yesterday. At that point I decided I wasn’t ready to go back to work yet, so I walked another 10 or 12 minutes at 4.0 mph. I forgot to look at the final distance, so I’m going to be conservative and just count it at 3.5 miles, but I think it was probably closer to 3.8.

The push-ups were more of a challenge today, but not much more. 40, 30, 30.

Starting Over

Posted on February 6, 2012 by jt

It seems I’m always starting over, and this week is no different. My goal for this week is to “run” 15 miles over 5 or 6 days. My secondary goal is to do 500 push-ups over the same time period. Technically, I’m on track after today. I ran for about 5 minutes, then walked the rest of the way to my 3 miles. I crossed the virtual finish line at 36 minutes, which makes for an average speed of 5.0 miles per hour. That’s far from good, but at least I did a full 3 miles. I think it may be tough to do 3 miles every single day. The push-ups, on the other hand, are going to be a piece of cake. I probably should have set a higher goal there. I planned on doing sets of 40, 30, 20, and 10, but it was easy enough to just do 40, 30, 30, and be done. Maybe I’ll bump it up next week, depending on how things go.

Eight Minute Mile

Posted on September 13, 2011 by jt

I don’t run very often, but I’m trying to run more. No, I’m not trying to run more, but I am trying to run faster. It all started when I decided to get back to dropping a few pounds. One of the keys for me has always been walking and/or jogging.

They say the ideal way to burn fat is to keep your heart rate around 65% of max for 20+ minutes every day. If you go much higher than that, you won’t burn as much fat, but it’s still good for you.

I found that walking about 4.0 mph on a treadmill keeps my heart rate close to that magic 65% number. I also found that it takes at least 10 minutes of walking at that speed before my heart rate climbs to that magical number, so I decided to run fast for a mile to crank my heart rate up, then walk at 4.0 mph for 20 minutes or so.

I can’t just jog that first mile, I have to push myself. That’s just how I work. So that first mile has been getting a little faster each time I run it. I think if you look back through my runkeeper logs, I’ve been pretty close to a 9 minute mile in the real world (a world where I don’t get to slow to 4.0 mph after one mile). Knowing that, I figured I could push myself fairly easily to hit a single 9 minute mile.

I set the treadmill for 8.5 mph and started running. I kept that pace for 4 full minutes, which put me well past the half way point of that first mile. I dropped it down to 6.0 mph for one minute, then cranked it back up a little bit for another few minutes.

I crossed the 1.0 mile mark right around 7:50.

I guess I overshot my goal a little. Now I wonder if I should keep pushing faster on that first mile, or if I should try to extend the running to a second mile. Maybe a little of both. We’ll have to see.

More short course

Posted on September 12, 2011 by jt

I still haven’t managed to get myself to swim practice on a long course day. In fact, I haven’t managed to get myself to practice more than once a week. Today was only my third time back at practice. It was a fairly small group today. I had my own lane and somehow I wound up getting a shorter interval time than everyone else. It was pretty brutal, but I think I’m not actually fast, but the fast people just were not there today. I’ll keep pushing.

Our coach was down in San Diego last Friday for a conference and expo. She brought back a bunch of different pieces of equipment for us to try out. I got to use these new hand paddles from Speedo that I really liked. They are smaller than my current paddles by quite a bit, so they’re easier to maneuver, but they have a curved lip on the front and inside edge, making them really grab the water. They felt small when they needed to be small, but powerful when they needed to be powerful. Like I said, I really liked them. I don’t see them listed on speedo.com just yet, but I’m guessing I’ll buy some when they start selling them.

As usual, I don’t think I’m remembering everything, but here’s what I think we did:

400 Free warm-up
8 x 50 kick-pull (25 kick, 25 pull) on 0:10 rest
8 X 50 fly kick on our backs (25 hands down, 25 streamline) on 0:50 (with fins)
4 x 50 10-10-10 kicking (both hands out, left out, both out, right out) with hand paddles
12 x 75 swim-drill-swim on 1:05
500 Pull warm-down
—–
2800 yards

Back for more

Posted on September 7, 2011 by jt

Monday was a holiday, so there was no swim practice. Yesterday they swam long course, and I wasn’t really ready for that kind of pain. Today I made it back to morning practice. I’m sort of sad that I waited till summer was over to start swimming again. I really enjoy swimming as the sun comes up, but that won’t happen again until next year. We’re already too far into fall… and they’ll be putting the bubble over the pool soon. Oh well, at least I’m swimming again.

100 free warm-up
2 x (
      8 x 25 kicking on 0:40
      20 x 25 drill with fins on 0:30 (5 x fly, 5 x back, 5 x breast, 5 x free)
      4 x 100 free on 1:30 (no fins)
    )
400 pull easy warm-down
-----
2700 yards

Up In The Night

Posted on September 2, 2011 by jt

A strange confluence of events over the past week or two led me to the pool in the middle of the night. It all started when I swam a few yards at Gold’s Gym. Then my old Masters Swim Team coach sent an email saying he was back from living in Texas and wanted to have a reunion with some of the old swimmers. We had everyone that could make it over for a pot-luck dinner… and by the end of the night I had committed to swimming “at least once” in the morning. That morning was this morning. And this morning I realized that “morning” has a completely different definition than I thought it did.

We got up around 5:10. Practice started at 5:30. Somehow getting up at 5:10 was not early enough to get us in the water on time. I don’t think we were very late, but we were at least a little late. It was still pitch black outside when we got in the pool.

I swam in the same lane as my old coach, Dave. As our warm-up was ending, we were joined by Keena, a local triathlon coach. Having not been in the water for a real workout in several years, I was a little uncomfortable. Somehow Dave and Keena managed to drang and push me through the main set. There’s a lot of pressure to perform when you have a coach 10 seconds ahead of you and another coach 10 seconds behind you. Somehow I stayed alive.

The first hints that it may not be night after all came as we were warming down. The horizon was just starting to turn from black to purple. We finished up, dried off, and drove all the way home before the sun ever came up. That’s just not right. And somehow I’ve gotten myself on the hook to be back at practice on Tuesday, when we’ll be doing LCM (Long Course Meters), which is much harder than the SCY (Short Course Yards) we did today.

I didn’t take any notes, but here’s at least most of what we did today:

6 x 200 pull
12 x hammer-down
6 x 50 russian free
6 x 50 drill your-choice
12 x 25 kick @ 0:40
500 pull

I need to get a kick board. I wasn’t happy using my pull buoy as a kick board.

jtalbot/swim

swimming again after all these years

Author Archives: jt