Week 2: Days 3,4,and 5

On Tuesday, Septemper 23, 1997 I ran 19.2 miles without stopping. Now I'm training for a marathon and you can follow my progress here.

I'm nearing the end of my second week of training (week 4 on the schedule in order to meet the training deadline). On Monday, I wrote that I ran 4 miles. After writing, I did a second 4 miles bringing to total for Monday to 8 miles.

Tuesday was a rest day and I did Push-Up, Sit-Up improvement--doing each of the two exercises for 2 minutes, then 1 minute. For Push-Ups, I managed 65 in two minutes, and 34 in one minute. For Sit-Ups, 53 in two, and 38 in one.

Before the end of our deployment in Cuba, I was doing over a hundred of each in the two minute time limits.

On Wednesday, I did a slow 6 miles and felt pretty good. I have found that running without an iPod makes me run faster though it is harder because there is less distraction for the mind. Time for the 6 miles was about 53 minutes.

Thursday, following the training schedule I did 4 miles early in the morning. I went out before I ate, and really didn't have a good evening meal the night before so I knew my energy would be low. So the 4 miles, again done without music or timer, took me about 33 minutes.

I'd really like to get my per mile time down to 8 minutes instead of the 8.5 to 9 that it is now. For that, I might have to add in some kind of speed work on a day off. Or, if I join a soccer team, that should probably do it. Fencing hasn't really helped my speed, but my leg strength is pretty good.

Long story short, the training is going well, and I feel like the acceleration won't be too much to handle.

Nine miles on tap for tomorrow so for today I am resting. I won't be doing any kind of weights or swimming so that I can make sure I have enough calories for tomorrow's run. I'll have to check where the 4.5 mile turn around is since I've learned I can't really depend on the mapquest mileage.

September 20th will come soon enough and I've got a lot of miles to go--407 including Saturday--hopefully I won't be hampered by injuries of any kind.

For beach week, I'm going to combine the Wednesday and Thursday runs into one day, and run Saturday's run on Friday. That way I'm only running 3 days, but I'm not sacrificing any mileage. In fact, I'll be doing 11 miles on both Wednesday, and Friday. I wonder how that will effect my longer runs--if doing those two in one week will help me with those slower, longer mileage days.

Right now, I'm back down to about 156 lbs. This is the first week I've weighed that little since before Nora was born. I'm guessing I'll get down to about 150lbs. I stayed at that weight during basic training which during which my body fat percentage dipped pretty low. I think it will dip a little lower here, but I've added more muscle than I had in 2001 and 2002 so I think I'll stay right around 150 lbs in the next several weeks. I could be wrong, by a pound or two in either direction, but I think that sounds reasonable.

While my body is adjusting to ever increasing mileage every week, I'll continue to lose, until I get to a point where I'm eating the calories I'm burning and there aren't many more calories for me to burn off as fat.

Keeping hydrated is one of the tougher challenges. I've been weighing myself before and after my runs to make sure I get the water weight back, but I really don't like drinking water that much.

Well, time to go rest and get ready for vacation!