So, last Sunday I felt like quite the Renaissance man! After my long run I went in to the office and got some quality work done, then went home and cooked myself a dinner made extra delicious by some outside-the-recipe spice additions, and then went out to the Blind Piglet where my team won the weekly trivia competition. I wish all my days could be so diversely productive!
The next few days, sadly were not quite so exciting. And, Monday and Tuesday I had the strange feeling of my legs feeling tired and generally weighed down with moderate quantities of lead, but with absolutely no soreness. I'm not sure I've ever experienced that particular combination...very strange. Anyway, I also had trouble sleeping this past week. I think, with everyone gone, I kept shifting my schedule to go to sleep progressively earlier in the evening, until this week I hit the point where I would go to bed before I was really tired enough. Which inevitably resulted in my sleeping for a few hours, waking up, and then being unable to get back to sleep. I'm going to have to work on re-setting my sleep schedule before the semester starts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday: 40 minutes on the elliptical. My preliminary feelings for ellipticals are not very complimentary.
Tuesday: 6 x 800 meters at MP - 0:45.
Wednesday: 5 miles at MP - 0:03. I meant to do this run at MP + 0:30, but I think running the intervals on the treadmill messed up my internal sense of pace.
Thursday: 1 warm-up mile at MP + 1:45, 1 mile at MP + 0:45, 2 miles at MP - 0:15, 1 cool-down mile at MP + 1:45
On Friday, The Coach says to rest.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, speaking of The Coach, I suppose now's as good a time as any to explain. The Coach (I'll have to post a picture sometime) is just a big collection of papers - monthly calendars, notecards, etc. - that I've got attached to the refrigerator. The monthly calendar, with its schedule of what to run on each day, is a veritable Blue Label of training plans, blended from only the finest hand-picked plans into (what I hope is) an exceptional final product. Should I really be mixing and matching from training plans, each of which seems to have its own logic? Who knows? Well, I certainly don't, and I'm not going to let that stop me! Each plan on its own seemed to have one problem or another - this one had reasonable mileage progression, but seemed boring; that one had great variety, but seemed far too ambitious for a novice runner; and so on - so I tried to take the strengths of each and roll them all together. And, since I'm not going to be competitive, and any time at all would be a Personal Record, it probably won't make all that much of a difference.
The rest of The Coach - a halo of index cards and post-its arranged around the calendar - is a collection of advice, pace guideline conversions (which I need plenty of... The training plans all had the pace for a given day's run as "your 5K pace today" or "run this at a 10K clip" - as if I have the faintest idea how fast I can run those distances!) , encouragements, and general running tips that my Assistant Coaches (i.e. friends) have been sending to me. There's still plenty of room on the fridge - and I've got more than enough magnets - for some additions, so if you have any advice please do let me know; you too can have the honor of being an Assistant Coach in this mad little endeavor! [As an aside, is it strange that my Assistant Coaches are all real people, but The Coach him-/her-/itself is just a collection of paper? Shouldn't I have organized things the other way around?]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday: 5 miles at MP + 0:15. I can't believe I'm saying this about a distance of five miles, but after Friday's day off and today's moderate pace, this felt like an easy run.
Sunday: 9 miles at MP + 0:45. Nine miles!! Farther than I've ever run before! Something I'm presumably going to have the opportunity to say that a lot over the next few months.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Currently reading: Mid-way through "The Broom of the System." It seems a bit more uneven than his later books, but I'm still thoroughly enjoying this one
Current estimate of what I think the odds are of me following through with this and being able to finish on May 1st: 63% - I mean, I don't feel particularly closer to being able to finish, but I also feel like almost by definition each week that I stick to the plan and put up a post the number has to creep a bit higher.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hm, if I can offer assistant coach advice on behalf of Young: Don't get pwned.
As for me, I place the odds of you finishing this at more like 90%. If there's anyone I know who can put his mind to something and do it, it's you (after all, remember when you grew a beard? Twice? Maybe even three times?? Yeah.)
Post a Comment