Wow, the past week went quick.
Day 1. Cross training. This time Benson and I actually worked out.
I used my watch to track a ‘weights’ session thinking it would do little more than track my heart rate…. it just keeps on surprising me, in a good way.
This is just a snip of the whole workout. The amazing thing is that it got most (~80%) of the exercise types and rep counts correct.
I have not had time to put the weights in for each exersize and see what it adds to the data, but its on my to-do list.
Anyway, its more of an upper body workout and I really enjoy it, so its nice to get it back into the routine.
Day 2. 3 miles. First run with the Garmin chest strap. It not only gives me more accurate heart rate readings, but it also has an accelerometer in it.
This gives more data points and refines some of the current points the watch already gives.
One of the new data sets is vertical bounce. This is the amount of vertical bob my upper body makes each step. The more bob, the more energy I am expending needlessly, it takes a lot of energy to move the mass of my torso up and down. This is a trade off with my stride length, and stride length is an energy calculation as well.
Anyway, point is, thanks to the chest strap linked to the watch and collecting all the data, I can measure any changes I make to my gait.
Day 3. 5 miles. Wednesday is trail run day. There is a nice 3 mile loop near Opto and we just love it.
Since I had to do 5, I just tacked a little on at the end, but the trail is a lot more work than road running.
Prof is in the vertial graph.
The trail is more of a whole body workout. One of the many reasons I like it, the other is, less cars / people.
I intend to include it at least once a week for the whole program. I hope to get faster over the course of the training, we shall see.
Day 4. 3 miles.
Decide to mix in some speed work on this shorter run. HIIT. High Intensity Interval Training. Its a thing. You basically do sprints over the course of the run.
Again, Garmin watch to the adding interest. It links in with my Strava account, so I can save any segments to it, since it has GPS, it knows when I get close to the start of the segment and counts me in, then while I am running the segment, it gives me a time of how far behind or in front I am of the fastest person to run that segment. I mostly run against myself, so it also gives me my last time and so I can easily run against me. Lots of fun.
You can see the clear bumps in the pace for the two sprints. I need to work in more of these sprints, so at the moment the plan is to do them on the shorter run day.
Day 5. 5 miles.
Crazy busy day at work. Hard to focus, just a run.
Day 6. Rest. We usually go for a 2ish mile walk with Freddy before breakfast. In the evening we had a Skype sesh with Gary and Dan. Always good to catch up, even when there are 24 minute delays in getting started due to computer issues at a place that is full of computers…..
Day 7. 11 miles.
Freddy had the idea to go out to Dripping Springs. Its a small state park not far from Temecula. Freddy hiked up while I ran up and back. We walked back to the car together.
Its nice because its a pretty gentle uphill the whole way…. that and its a 8 mile long uphill. So yeah, a little longer than the training plan required, but I figured on walking back with Freddy as a walk, not a run.
For the most part the plan worked.
Just two wrinkles in the plan. 1. My right sock would not stay on. It kept creeping down my foot. Very frustrating. At one point, I stopped and swapped socks, and sure enough, the right one creeped down. Clearly there is something different about the shape of my right foot. (The socks were worn out and had zero eleactic in them, tossed them when I got home).
2. I just failed to get into a rhythm. Whether it was because I did not eat right the day before, or sleep well that night, dunno, but I was just all sorts of discombobulated.
We plan to go back and tackle it again a few more times and get myself dialed in.
Thus endeth week two.
