10K - week -27

Sunday
I worked downtown today, so I had the opportunity to do the walk home. Total of 380 Calories. The walk was great and I felt great.
Monday
This day, I needed to grab some items as Safeway, so I walked from there for 217 Calories. Grand total for the week so far, 597 Calories.
Tuesday
This day, I had a Chiropractor appointment in Kensington, so I walked to that. This was one of the day that the @#$^%@# Garmin Forerunner 305 just could not pick up a satellite while I was downtown. I ended up picking it up for the last 8 minutes of the walk which was 25 minutes. The Garmin recorded 58 Calories, so I'm estimating 153 for the walk, making a weekly total of 750 Calories.
Wednesday
OK - at this stage, walking three days in a row doesn't work for me. I was so exhausted in the AM that I was dizzy. In the evening all I did was lie down and read.
Thursday
Feeling much better today, but still taking it easy. My plan at this point is to do the remaining 450 calories on Saturday, although I may just settle for less that 1200 for the first few weeks of the program.
Friday And Saturday
On Friday I woke up achey and with a slight sore throat and a plugged ear. No exercise today unless I radically improve.
Today was also the day of the first of four Christmas lunches between now and the end of the year. I certainly indulged --- and paid dearly for it in the middle of the night = 5 hours of diarrhea which just wore me out. Sigh. No exercise on Friday or Saturday, so, thus ends the first week of the training plan.
Summary
Mistakes:

• Exercising three days in a row (actually 4 as I had done about 300 calories the Saturday before this week).
• Ordering a steak too rare for me on Friday. shudder
• I need to track my food and get sensible with it as well.

Good things:

• I did a good job of enjoying the exercise.
• I kept up on the blogging.

For next week, I'm going to reinstate the "Lose-It!" app on my iPod touch and not worry if I only get to about 1000 calories of exercise. Friday is a "day off" but I work next Saturday and Sunday, so I'll need to consider that in my plans.
Totals for the week:

• Calories: 750
• Distance: 6.7 miles
• Average pace: 16 min / mile
  

Planning for the 10K

So, running a 10K in May. From pretty much sedentary now.

The biggest question for me is "how not to overtrain?" I've been doing start-stop training for the past couple of years. What seems to happen is that I start off reasonably, then I remember how I used to run when marathon training and I start overdoing it. This is really frustrating because I like running.

So, walking home from work today, I came up with a plan so cunning in its simplicity, I was astounded. :)

I'm going to plan to Calories for the next 5 - 6 weeks and then re-evaluate. What I'm thinking at the moment is do a minimum of +1200 calories / maximum of +1800 calories a week, spread over at least three days per week. Each session should be a minimum of 200 calories and a max of 600. My goal would be to do this in 4 -5 sessions, preferably just by walking home from work. This is a 45 - 50 minute walk, yielding 380 calories. If I take the train to Kensington station, that cuts it down to about 30 minutes and 220 calories. That leaves quite a few combinations that will work.




Check back later, we'll see how it goes.

2009-11-23: Small clarification / update: Reduce the minimum number of calories per session to 150. That seems to be where I can definitely "feel" something. Max of 6 days of exercise per week. Max of 600 calories per day, not just per session.

Step 1 to the 10K in May

I'm a poet and didn't even know it :)


First step for me, is replacing my existing shoes. The problem is for the last while, my fav shoes, the Asics Gel-Kinsei2s (I suppose there are more expensive shoes - but I've yet to find them) wear out at the inner padding of the heel-glove (left two pics)(well - what do you call that part of the shoe?). Very frustrating as I feel like I don't get my moneys worth as the tread (right two pics) is still in fine form. Mind you, they do last 6+ months before this starts and when I was marathon training I was lucky if a shoe made 4 months before the tread was hooped.

So, that is me.

First step for my sweetie, apparently, is discussing the wisdom of setting a time goal with me. I don't know - I see the wisdom of her advice: "Just go out and have fun running, for goodness sakes!". The problem is, (and this would probably better fit in my other blog, Angst in the 50s) I like having a time goal. I like pushing myself a bit. If I don't have that specific goal, I'm likely to just laze around and get nowhere.

Goals, goals, goals

As I reflect on the last few months and my spotty / sporadic running during that time, I asked myself: "Why can't I seem to get some consistency"?

I've come to believe the biggest reason is a lack of goals.

I started running in my early thirties, somewhat as a response to a divorce and wanting to get fit - but then it lead to just a sheer joy of running. After about a year of on again / off again running, I bought some books and set a goal for a Marathon.

Naturally, I ignored a lot of the advice about first marathon goal setting (Biggest one is - only goal should be to finish). The nice thing is that I created a plan, followed it reasonable closely, modified the plan as needed and actually reached my modified goal (Initial goal was for a 3:30 Marathon, modified it to 3:45).

The big thing about the goals for me is to be Specific, Measurable and Achievable. Specifically, I'm going to run a 10K next year. Currently, the one I'm considering is 10K associated with the Calgary Marathon.

What I don't yet know is what time I should set? (This is the Measurable and Achievable parts). What can I achieve in the next 6 months of running? Right now, I think 10K would take be about 2 hours :), most of it walking. If I remain injury free in my training, I'm likely to be able to run it in under an hour.

Given that I really don't know what is achievable now, how long will it take for me to get a good sense of what is achievable. Am I just creating a tempest in a teapot - perhaps the right answer is to set the goal, work towards it and then modify if required. Hmmm - sounds like a good way to go.

The goal is:

• Run the 10K on May 30, 2010.
• Stay injury free throughout the training period.
• Focus on finishing rather than speed.
• Plan for an under 60M 10K, revise this number in January and April.
• Blog weekly or better about my plan, approach and progress.
  

All of this should be quite doable. I remained substantially injury free for my first three marathons, it was just when I did the 4th a few months after the third that problems started occurring.