That's another 21K on my shoes

Greetings everyone! I made through another week of running. I have logged a total of 21 Km this week since Sunday. Today after work, but before dinner, my wife and I put in a good 3K to give ourselves a bit of a break.

Actually, some money came in yesterday from income tax returns and some health benefit reimbursement, so I decided to splurge and go out for all you can eat sushi. And we ate too much! We felt pretty rough afterward, but what we ate last night definitely had an impact on our performance today. Note to self... stay away from that much sushi for a long time.

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The good news is we seem to handling the running pretty well. I have a mild fear of over-training but I think we are taking everything in a good stride and not pushing too far. We're still doing 10 and 1's during our 6K runs but next Friday we may attempt to do a straight 3K of solid running.

Last week running Tuesday and Wednesday made for very sore quads on Thursday, but this week the muscle stiffness seemed to be negligible, but we definitely feel more tired. Going to sleep in tomorrow and get lots of rest this weekend.

And by rest, I mean sleeping in Saturday since Sunday at 8:30am we have to run 6Km again :)

Peace and good running to you,
Rick

PS: Just for interest, check out the runner blogs and the article on massage and running at iRun.ca. Ok not just for fun, but I'll explain in a later post ;)

I started a 10K clinic

I started a 10K clinic this week. I've decided I want to blog about it. Therefore I've decided to limit blog posts to once a week.

My wife and I planned to get into running again this spring so we went to the Running Room to sign up. There was a 5K clinic on Friday's but Friday's are pretty busy. The other option was Tuesday... a 10K clinic. We decided to sign for it with a bit of reservation, when were asked if we wanted to take part in a research study through Wilfrid Laurier University. We said sure. They said if you get accepted, they'll pay for your clinic fees and race fees! Woo hoo!

So last week we had our first fitness apprasial and there will be one 4 times over the 10 week training period. The study is to "assess the effectiveness of a regular individualized massage therapy program in diminishing indicies of muscle damage/soreness and training discomfort in novice runners progression toward completion of their first 10km road race". Its a mouthful, but those are the words or a real medical study.

Our first run night was Tuesday: 6km and supposed to be steady run...no 10 and 1's which is the typical Running Room program (in the 5K clinic you build gently up to running 10 minutes and walking for 1 minute as a rest). I gathered a group of people who wanted to run 10 and 1s. You can build to a steady 6k run if you are careful with it but for some people, this was their first clinic!

On Wednesday we ran 5K and we still maintained 10and1s. This was our first time ever running two days in a row. We were supposed to run today as well but due to scheduling we skipped it and run Saturday. Besides I have 1 hour of kung fu (wing chun) on Saturday anyway and my wife has belly-dance class practice Friday and Saturday for a recital on Sunday. Besides... I had a lot of blogging to get done!

Next we'll try running up to 4 times a week. According to the schedule by week 4 we'll actually be running 5 times a week. I'll try and keep you posted on my kilometers per week. During the last clinic I didn't miss any runs and I probably made between 12 - 15 km per week.

So far this week I have completed 11Km in just two days!

We're supposed to also keep track of any aches and pains we feel, and if we do any "therapy" to over come it. Usually I'm sore the second day after running, but even with running two days in a row, the pain was much lower then expected. I had sore quads the day of the second run and the run started being a bit difficult because of it, and the next day I did have trouble walking down stairs because of my quads, but now I am pretty much pain free!

Tomorrow we'll try and get in a slow 3K if we can. Hopefully I can also get some stretching or yoga in as well as kung fu... but the weather should be nice enough to ... grrr! clean up the yard!

Another 3 KM down...

Another 3KM down and many more to go!

My wife and I just got back from our first run of the season. We thought we could continue running into the fall, but since our last running clinic ended in late summer we just didn't make it back out with the group. Running without a running group is just not possible for us it seems... although this summer we'll try a bit harder!

The challenge now is that we are going to sign up for an upcoming 10K clinic. I'm a little nervous about it, although my last 5K race ended in good condition with me hitting a time of under 32 minutes. I had intended to continue to build more of a base by doing another 5K clinic but we'll see how this goes. The 10K just fits into our schedule a bit better.

So tonight we did many laps around our local rec centre. We just learned two weeks ago (while attending a Yoga For Home yoga-thon) that the Rec Centre was open for public running. I never thought about it before, but a running track has its own specific rules, including running the other direction on alternate days (to avoid injury).

I found it was rough going almost immediately. I had a minor stitch pretty much the whole time, and my left knee started hurting so I slowed it down. All day my right knee had been acting up but its fine now! Luckily I'm off to the chiro tomorrow.

Today's tip: When running indoors, always make sure you have enough water. Many people bring water whenever they run and I'm sure there is nothing wrong with that, but in general if you are exercising for under 30 minutes having more water during the exertion would not normally be necessary.

It was hard at first, but now I feel good about ourselves that we pushed to make it out tonight. The wife has just come off her cold and we had put it off far too long already. Besides, the new clinic starts in one week!