We had our annual Alumni Basketball tourney the last couple of days. It is always a great time. Reliving the past, catching up with friends, playing some ball and realizing just how old and out of shape we really are now. Our team did pretty good this year and we ended up playing in the championship game, which we lost (and I hate losing). So that means that we played one game Friday night and three games throughout the day on Saturday.
So while it is always a great time playing it comes at a price. Those four games over the weekend sure take their toll. Let's see if I can list all of the parts of my body that are sore. My neck, my back, my arms, my quads, my calves are unbelievably tight, the balls of my feet and I have a couple blisters on the tips of my toes. But it is totally worth it.
When I got up this morning I sure wasn't feeling any looser. But I went on a nice and easy 2.75 miles run with Amy and I feel a lot better now. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to be plenty sore the next few days. I plan to spend the rest of day with my foam roller and doing some yoga, we'll see if it helps.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
It's Been Awhile
It sure has been awhile since I posted anything. I have been running quite a bit and learning more about it though. I guess I just haven't really had anything to say about it though. I do plan on sharing some of the information that I've been acquiring in future posts.
I signed up for the Lincoln Half Marathon and have been working hard at getting ready for it. I'm pretty excited about it, but I think Amy might be more excited than I am since she ran it last year and had an awesome experience. And I'm actually more excited now than I was even an hour ago, I just found out the race is going to finish on the 50 yard line in memorial stadium. I always thought that would be the best way to finish it.
For my training plan I start off following Hal's Novice Half Plan for a couple of weeks. I switched for a couple of reasons. Hal's plan only gets up to 10 miles, which is almost a quarter of the race short. While I'm sure the excitement of race day could push me through the last 5k, I'd feel a lot better about the race if I had run closer to the actual distance. Hal's plan wasn't fitting into my schedule very well either. I usually ended up running Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with a long run either Saturday or Sunday. Sure I was supposed to cross train on those off days but I wouldn't get that done very often.
When I found the half plan from marathonrookie.com I liked it a lot as it fixed both issues I mentioned above. With it I'll get up to 12 miles while still increasing mileage at a reasonable rate. It fits into my schedule much better too. I have every other Friday off from work and those are my rest days with this plan. Since I was working out at the gym on base while it was still cold and snowy out I would usually end up taking that day off from training instead of heading back to work on my day off.
My training has been going well so far with just a couple minor setbacks. I use runningAhead to map out all my runs so I know how long they are. There is a bike trail about a mile from our house that I've been running on. Since we're still pretty new to the area each time I run farther on it is a new adventure. Looking at the trail on Google Maps (which runningAhead uses) it looks like it is paved, but I've found out a couple times that isn't always the case. The first time it wasn't a big deal, instead of pavement it was a rock trail, so I just went with it. The next time it happened it was a bit more of a problem. I set out for a 6 mile run, my longest at that point, again the trail switched to rock. But then I had to cross a street and there was a bar across the trail that said 'No Trespassing' so I crossed to the other side of the creek and ran along the trail on the other side where it was paved. Well the landmark I was looking for to know when to turn around was on the other side, so I missed it. I ended up running 7.6 miles instead of 6 and ended up with a few real nice blisters. With about a mile to go I could tell I was going to have them, so if I would have ran the correct route I would have been fine.
Last weekend I set out on an 8 miler, pretty much the same route as the 7.6 miler from the week before so no surprises. My blisters were still pretty far from healed so I'm not sure if I was compensating for that or what, but after my run my the outside edge of my right was bothering me, it felt bruised. When I ran Monday night it hurt quite a bit when I ran on the road, so I ran on the grass along side it as much as possible. I've been icing it a lot and instead of running I'll continue to use the elliptical until it's better. It seems to be much better now so hopefully will be better next week if for no other reason than I'm not a fan of the elliptical, I just can't seem to figure it out. I think that my stride is too long for it or something so it feels really unnatural.
I signed up for the Lincoln Half Marathon and have been working hard at getting ready for it. I'm pretty excited about it, but I think Amy might be more excited than I am since she ran it last year and had an awesome experience. And I'm actually more excited now than I was even an hour ago, I just found out the race is going to finish on the 50 yard line in memorial stadium. I always thought that would be the best way to finish it.
For my training plan I start off following Hal's Novice Half Plan for a couple of weeks. I switched for a couple of reasons. Hal's plan only gets up to 10 miles, which is almost a quarter of the race short. While I'm sure the excitement of race day could push me through the last 5k, I'd feel a lot better about the race if I had run closer to the actual distance. Hal's plan wasn't fitting into my schedule very well either. I usually ended up running Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with a long run either Saturday or Sunday. Sure I was supposed to cross train on those off days but I wouldn't get that done very often.
When I found the half plan from marathonrookie.com I liked it a lot as it fixed both issues I mentioned above. With it I'll get up to 12 miles while still increasing mileage at a reasonable rate. It fits into my schedule much better too. I have every other Friday off from work and those are my rest days with this plan. Since I was working out at the gym on base while it was still cold and snowy out I would usually end up taking that day off from training instead of heading back to work on my day off.
My training has been going well so far with just a couple minor setbacks. I use runningAhead to map out all my runs so I know how long they are. There is a bike trail about a mile from our house that I've been running on. Since we're still pretty new to the area each time I run farther on it is a new adventure. Looking at the trail on Google Maps (which runningAhead uses) it looks like it is paved, but I've found out a couple times that isn't always the case. The first time it wasn't a big deal, instead of pavement it was a rock trail, so I just went with it. The next time it happened it was a bit more of a problem. I set out for a 6 mile run, my longest at that point, again the trail switched to rock. But then I had to cross a street and there was a bar across the trail that said 'No Trespassing' so I crossed to the other side of the creek and ran along the trail on the other side where it was paved. Well the landmark I was looking for to know when to turn around was on the other side, so I missed it. I ended up running 7.6 miles instead of 6 and ended up with a few real nice blisters. With about a mile to go I could tell I was going to have them, so if I would have ran the correct route I would have been fine.
Last weekend I set out on an 8 miler, pretty much the same route as the 7.6 miler from the week before so no surprises. My blisters were still pretty far from healed so I'm not sure if I was compensating for that or what, but after my run my the outside edge of my right was bothering me, it felt bruised. When I ran Monday night it hurt quite a bit when I ran on the road, so I ran on the grass along side it as much as possible. I've been icing it a lot and instead of running I'll continue to use the elliptical until it's better. It seems to be much better now so hopefully will be better next week if for no other reason than I'm not a fan of the elliptical, I just can't seem to figure it out. I think that my stride is too long for it or something so it feels really unnatural.
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