First Two Mile Run

I've been religiously continuing with my running. I've now gotten out the door and have run / walked 21 times over 6 weeks. This last time was for 2 miles, which I did at a 11:28 pace. I have 8 weeks until my 5k so I think I will have enough time.

While I’ve been showing improvement on running, my pushup training has been poor. I think I figured out why. With running, I start by walking for warm-up, then jog and slowly increase speed. A normal pushup is like full on sprinting – I usually get out of breath before I get tired (because for some reason I end up holding my breath). My consistency has been poor, but it would also be poor on running if I knew I had to start sprinting the moment I stepped out the door. So I started training at a 45 degree angle. Yesterday my arms got really tired (still sore today) for the first time, plus I was eager to go back for additional sets. I will need the arm strength in a triathlon swim. I think I have a good potential to do 500 meters in 10 minutes, but I need the strength to maintain freestyle. I did ½ of laps with backstroke when I went, which is slower plus I would always go of course and hit the lane line.

First Swim, First Long Run

I had a busy weekend of exercise:

• On Friday I went swimming. I did a total of 50 laps (25 yd pool). I did two sets of 500 yds. I basically alternated between crawl and backstroke. My freestyle pace was baout 3 min/100m and my backstroke pace was about 3:40/100m.
• On Saturday I did a longer continuous run of 1.69 mi at a pace of 11:58 min/mi. My legs were getting tired before I was getting out of breath.

I am definitely a better swimmer than runner. Even though it was my first time in the pool and I could swim at a rate that is not far off a reasonable triathlon times and have enough gas left to do it again, but I would like be almost last in the run, even if the run was my only event. Swimming did reinforce my need to do upper-body exercises on my off-run days. So much of the crawl is upper body and conditioning my arms to do most of the work would save my legs for a bike or run. I have signed up to run the 5K on Thanksgiving day.

Long term, I am aiming (long-term) to run the Woodlands triathlon next May. I figure I’ve had enough intellectual accomplishments in my life, I better get some physical ones before I get too old. I also don’t want to be a fat dad. I want to be active with my kids when I am 45. One of my goals is to get into the old Navy PRT standard for my age group

Back from Calf Strain

The calf strain sidelined me for a long week. It was frustrating because I'm amped up to go run, but I can't. I treated the calf strain with rest, ice, and some heat. After about a week of this, my running was uninhibited by any injury and I’ve had three good runs since.

I doing this “Couch to 5K” program, which usually divides segments into running and walking, but next run I want to see if I can run 2 miles,  no matter how slow.

I am still interested in getting to triathlons. However I need to practice swimming (need access to a pool) and I need a bike. I haven’t ridden a bike since I was probably 15, but I hear you don’t forget. I have looked at some bikes but there are tons of options, choices, and things I need to learn (change a flat, etc). It is somewhat overwhelming.  I also need to add in more upper body exercises on my off days (I only run every other day). I sometimes do some pushups, but I need to do three sets consistently. I really hate pushups. By the way, I weighed  in at 207.7, so I’m down about 10 lbs from my first measurement .

A Calf Strained

I was continuing on my Couch to 5k and I got a calf strain. What happened is that I saw a guy I knew walking, right around when my walking segment was supposed to begin, so I walked and talked. However, he was walking much slower than my typical walk segments and I ended up walking for much longer than my alloted time. So when I started back up, it was straight into running. It happened instantly, and it was a sharp searing pain. I tried streching it, but it was of no use.

FYI, there has been no weight loss in the last 10 days.

Couch to 5k

So far my training has been haphazard. However, I found a simple online training program - Couch to 5K. It is a schedule to get to a 5k in 9 weeks. It calls for only running every other day. Since my race is 11 weeks away, I may modify it to stretch it out. I did a total of 9.5 minutes of running over six segments. I want to run at a fast pace in the run segments, and then ideally shrink the walking segments.

I also found this link 100 Beginner Running Tips to be rather helpful as well.