Archive for September, 2008

Circuit Training Yesterday

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

I did a timed training circuit yesterday. It was great — especially with the squat thrusts mixed in! I would like to do this routine more often. Here’s the breakdown:

  1. 1 mile sprint at about 5:20 pace (on the treadmill)
  2. 50 body weight squats
  3. 25 push ups
  4. 50 sit ups
  5. 15 pull ups
  6. 20 squat thrusts
  7. 50 more body weight squats
  8. 25 more push ups
  9. 15 more pull ups
  10. 20 more squat thrusts
  11. 1 mile sprint at 6:00 pace (on the treadmill)

My total time was about 20 minutes and 15 seconds. I have to consider the fact that I ran 16 miles the day prior, which surely affected my performance. After that, I threw around the kettlebells a bit. I did three sets of one-arm kettlebell snatches, and three sets of double-arm dead cleans into push presses. Between sets, I did v-sits and stability ball passes.

Today I ran my obligatory eight miles. My legs were burnt out a bit after yesterday’s sprints, but I pushed through and finished in about 63 minutes. Tomorrow is a rest day (sort of). I have a short warm-up jog, then karate training at 5am, but no serious running scheduled.

Thursday I’ll be in NYC but need to fit in an eight mile run. I think I’ll bring along some workout clothes and run around battery park and along West Side Highway. Should be a nice change of scenery.

A Good Training Week

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

One week ago was the Philadelphia Distance Run. I improved my time from last year by a bit more than three minutes. Finish time was 1:36:18. I expected better, but wasn’t really tapered having run 20 miles seven days prior and having done seven miles of speedwork just three days prior. Unfortunately, if this half-marathon is an indicator of my performance on Nov 2 at the ING NYC Marathon, I won’t hit my 3:10 mark. I need to dig deeper with my training.

And so I think I have — all my runs were outdoor except for the speed work. I ran an eight mile “easy run” on Tuesday (two days after the half-marathon) in 61 minutes. On Thursday I did speed work: 6 miles total, 4 x 1600 at 6:07… only possible because I was on the treadmill. On Friday I ran 7 miles in 51:27 — in the rain. I felt great though and think the rain helped.

This morning I started my 16 mile long run just before 6am. 20 minutes into the run, the rain came. And the rain never stopped. Sure, it keeps you cool but ’tis a bit of a drag running 16 miles in the rain. The sun never peeked through the clouds during my run. My performance was good — first four miles at an 8 minute pace, then slowed the pace to about 8:20-something.  I haven’t uploaded my garmin stats yet but I finished in 2:13. That’s two runs back to back in the rain. Yesterday I trained twice — an hour of karate at Gold’s and two hours of karate at the dojo. And my core training during the week is really making a difference – I feel more solid during my runs.

I tried something new today — I carried gatorade with me. In the past when I drank gatorade on the race course, it sat in my stomach like a rock. But I think I’m finally ready to take advantage of all the positive things it supposedly does for you during long runs. I plan to use gatorade in the NYC Marathon so I need to get used to it. The first few drinks I took today were unwelcome, as I’m used to simple water, but I adjusted. I carried a 24 ounce bottle of grape G2 and came close to finishing it. After the run, I downed two servings of muscle milk, finshed the gatorade, and drank another 20 ounces of water or so. I wasn’t dehydrated (as evident by my “color” during elimination) — I was just very thirsty. Through the remainder of the day, my hunger was insatiable. I think I may have consumed too many calories, but the bulk of them were good calories.

Next week’s training schedule is a relatively light one, but I have some extracurricular runs squeezed in. The sked calls for 8 miles on Tue, 8 miles on Thursday, 7 miles on Friday and 7 miles on Sunday. I’m running the JP Morgan Championship run (3.5 miles) Saturday with the News Corporation team. The race is on Park Ave in NYC at 9am. And tomorrow I’m doing a performance test, which includes two one-mile sprints. It will be interesting to see how that goes, the day after a 16 mile long run.

Good Long Run

Monday, September 1st, 2008

I had a good long run yesterday. A good friend Bill joined me for the 20 mile training run. This was his first 20 mile run and he did awesome. I used gmap-pedometer to map out the course from the Lawrenceville Gold’s gym parking lot, along Village road to Old Trenton Road, then three miles into Mercer Country Park, and back to the starting point.

The weather was perfect! We started the run about 4:30am so there were not many cars on the road and the temperature was still very cool.

Nice Run Bill! Thanks for coming out hours before the sun and putting in the miles with me.

Here are the details and splits. We kicked at the end and pulled off some negative splits. Mile 12 was higher because we stopped for a water and orange slice break.

Elevation Gain (ft): +4,087 / -4,067
Pace: 8:58 mins/mile
Total Time: 3hr 01min 35sec

Mile # Time
(m:s)
Distance
(mi )
Mph Calories
1 8:49 1.00 7.7 112
2 8:23 1.00 7.7 116
3 8:37 1.00 7.5 115
4 8:42 1.00 7.5 116
5 8:31 1.00 7.6 115
6 8:37 1.00 7.6 121
7 8:36 1.00 7.9 118
8 8:43 1.00 7.2 111
9 8:31 1.00 7.4 113
10 8:52 1.00 7.0 108
11 8:58 1.00 7.4 100
12 11:34 1.00 7.0 105
13 9:07 1.00 7.2 112
14 9:49 1.00 7.0 114
15 9:57 1.00 6.8 117
16 9:34 1.00 6.7 115
17 9:55 1.00 6.7 114
18 9:31 1.00 6.5 113
19 9:16 1.00 6.8 112
20 8:16 1.00 8.4 115

And here is the route on motion-based, uploaded from my Garmin 405:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6657086