Training Updates

• Monday - I was supposed to run 5 miles easy + lift + stretch/yoga today. I didn't do that. Instead I ate a quarter of a pizza and ran 3.5 miles easy, following that up by a salad and beer. Needless to say I got a stomach cramp during this easy run. It was nice though, I did it with the fiance and we went to his favorite running spot (which is basically uphill).

• Tuesday - Today was a swim + bike workout. I didn't do it. My sister was finally feeling up for going out so we went to an early dinner and I spent several hours afterward organizing my to do lists and catching up on online stuff while they slept.

• Wednesday - I did the track workout I was supposed to do today. It went well, but I'm not sure I did what I was supposed to do. (As a sidenote, the only thing I ate before this run @ 1:30 p.m. were three Pillsbury cinnamon buns that my sister made this a.m.)
  

• Track workout was to be 5 x 1000m negative split repeats @ 4:20, 4:17, 4:15, 4:12 and 4:10 with 2 minutes rest inbetween. Mine were actually all over the board. I tried really hard on the first 1 to hit 4:20 exactly but was 1 second slow - I guess I miscalculated. It didn't feel hard though. The second one I tried to go at the pace that I thought would be 4:17 and do it w/o looking at my watch. I missed it by 2 seconds (slow)! The 3rd repeat I was pissed and figured I was going to need to step it up a notch to hit 4:15. Um, I did it in 4:02...geez. This felt harder but I obviously way over-did the 4:15 goal. I decided from there on I was just going to push it and see what happened. My last 2 repeats came in at 4:07 and 4:01. I'm glad that I did a negative split pretty much overall, but I may have blown the whole point of the workout. What was the point, you ask? I have no clue. Anyway, here are the stats again:

1. 1000m #1 = 4:21 (170 bpm)
2. 1000m #2 = 4:19 (174 bpm)
3. 1000m #3 = 4:02 (178 bpm)
4. 1000m #4 = 4:07 (175 bpm)
5. 1000m #5 = 4:01 (178 bpm)

It should be noted that I skipped my drills today because of a time crunch - yet another example of the training crunch I'm in!

Other random crap:

• Twitter - I joined Twitter last night and have tweeted twice. I don't know if its my bag yet.

• Training woes - I realized this week that training is starting to become a serious time commitment. I'm not sure I'm ready for it. Work is becoming really busy for me and it isn't as easy to get away from my desk in the middle of the day. Some of my initial thoughts are to try to break up workouts - do an a.m., then a p.m. workout and not stress about doing a straight up brick. Another is to maybe focus more time on the weekends. It is scary when I view track workouts as my easier workouts of the week.

• Food problems - as you can see from above I'm just not following a healthy eating schedule 100% of the time. I'm a little less focused on weight stuff lately so need to re-focus my energy on fuel for training. Something is lacking that causes me to make poor decisions.

• Guests leaving - tomorrow morning my sister and niece leave after 6 days of being sick and intruding on my life. Just kidding, we had fun, sort of. My sister was literally laid up with the flu almost the entire time she was here so we really didn't do anything (anything!) that we'd planned. I'm really bummed out about the whole thing.
  

• Life schedule - Typically I have a master calendar print out of every month of the year that highlights really high level activities in my life. (Ex. races, vacations, visitors, weddings, etc.) I haven't done this yet for 2009 and I'm needing it ASAP. It just gives me a general sense of the ups and downs of activity that I can expect throughout the year. It makes me happy to know that I've thought about the coming 12 months at least once and have documented most of it. My b/f and I used to take the printout to our discounted sushi dinner every Sunday and re-examine it and I miss that. I just want to have a general sense of what's coming up next rather than living day to day like I feel I am right now.

And now I'm done. I took an Ambien about 30 minutes ago that is causing my fingers to slow their typing. I never take sleeping pills but I had been anticipating my 5 year old niece to sleep next to me on the airbed (she was excited about the slumber party) and knew I'd need security against her kicking me all night. At the last minute she bailed out and now I'm all drugged up for no reason and now rambling. I'll update tomorrow on how the pill worked out.