Future Plans

In my near future as a runner, I plan on finishing my last year with XC team, and hopefully compete one more year in Track. As, for long term, I don’t know what to expect after college, I would like to say that i’ll continue running or at least some form of working out, but who knows…. As for now i’m looking forward to racing again and im gonna take each day as it comes. Best of luck to everyone and God bless.

5k

The 5k on monday went great. I didnt run my goal time of 18 minutes but i was still satisfied with my run. Congrats to everyone who finished. I’ m looking forward to maybe run another race this summer, and if not in the fall on the Stockton XC team

weekend runs

I ran 2 out of the 3 days this weekend. I took my usual rest day on friday, logged 4 miles on saturday and 3 on sunday. I wanted to do a much longer run this sunday but figured it was a bad idea with the class 5k run being held tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how I and everyone else does. I heard that the weather should be nice which should make for better racing. See you in the morning

Update: timed mile

We ran our second timed mile of the semester on Thursday.  I ran 5:35 a 25 second improvement from before. I was pleased overall with my time, considering that I have seen an improvement in only three weeks of training. Its a good start, now I just need to continue my training while increasing my mileage over the next few weeks.

Other Cardio

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I am a former race walker. Not alot of people know about or have even heard of this track event so I will elaborate. Race walking is a track and field discipline that evolves walking instead of running. Competitors race  while being watched by three different officials that judge the walkers on proper form. Proper form being that one foot is on the ground at all times, the walker is “rolling” over a straight leg (no knee bend), and the feet are landing from heel to toe (in that order). If 3 fouls are observed or a foul in the last 200 meters, the racer is disqualified. This form makes race walking different than speed walking which it is often confused with. The race distance varies greatly from some short distances of 1 mile, all the way up to the Olympic distances of 20k and even 50k!

I started walking my freshman year of college. At the beginning of track season, my coach approached me and pretty much said that i was going to do it. At the time I didnt know much about the sport so I said I would give it a try. I practiced it  few times and realized one thing. It was harder than running. My shins were screaming…my knees hurt and I was sweating bullets. It was a full body workout. Even my shoulders and back were sore after wards. The cardio workload was great too. because I was working different muscles other than running, my body had to work harder, and my breathing was deep. I continued to walk for the remainder of the season and I noticed a difference in my leg and  upper body strength…my cardio improved and also I began to race better, not just walking, but running too.It is not the most popular race and it looks funny if you don’t understand the sport, but it is tough. Some runners have made the switch to walking because it is a low impact sport  and is not hard on the feet or knees, once the flexibility is achieved. And for those that think it is a slow boring sport, some elite walkers can race a mile in under 6 minutes.

If your looking for a change of pace and maybe to do some cross training, and don’t mind looking a little goofy doing so give race walking a try. its a full body workout that can only be beneficial to any athlete.

 

2007  IAAF World track and field championships, 20k racewalk:

 

Update

havent posted in awhile so heres an update. I took friday as a rest day as the schedule suggested. Today I did a fast run for 5.8 miles. I just started using g-mappedometer.com and i’ll have to say it is really useful. I’ve been mapping some old routes from the past and have notice that my mileages have been a little off. I’m gonna try a new run for my distance day tomorrow.

weekend runs

My weekend runs for May 28-29 were not very good. I only got out for a short amount of time on both. This weekend was hectic. My girlfriends graduation started on Friday afternoon with a dinner dance. There was events all day Saturday including speeches, a mass, and than we ate with her family. I managed to squeeze a run in this day before dinner time. It was short, through downtown Providence. I didnt want to go too far cause i didnt know my way around the city. The hills weren’t too bad ( I avoided the biggest one) and i realized urban running is way different than around campus. Instead of watching out for tree roots, I was watching out for buses lol. On Sunday was the actual graduation ceremony, which I thought was  interesting. Most graduations bore the hell out of me, but here we got to watch Jack Nicholson make a speech after recieving an honorary degree. He was hilarious! he had the whole crowd crackin up.  After the ceremony we had to set up for her family party which went until about nine o clock, after this I FINALLY got a run in….2 miles on the hotel treadmill. So , I didnt log the miles I wanted to this weekend, but the weekend went great, everyone had a good time and more importantly my girlfriend recieved her long awaited, much deserved diploma.

Jack’s speech :   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrNQ_sL10JI

Nutrition goals

My nutrition goals for the class and hopefully the remainder of this summer is to definitely increase my protein intake. I feel like this will help with overall strength and endurance while running. I need to cut more fats, as i have noticed from lose-it.com and I can do this by watching how much fast food I eat and by eating healthier on the weekends. Also more protein should help me maintain my weight while training. I feel im at a good running weight and I don’t want to lose any.

Friday

I took today as a rest day, 1.) because i badly need it 2.) because I drove to providence, Rhode Island for my girlfriends graduation from Brown U.    I didn’t plan on doing much, mostly resting my legs, until she asked me if i wanted to play basketball at their athletic center. Rest? or whoop on some ivy league scrubs? I chose to play. It felt good to do some different exercising other than running and we had a good time. Ive been looking at the hills here in RI and there are some big ones. tomorrow and Sunday”s run is going to be a challenge. Ill be sure to post more about my weekend runs

monday run

Today I was HURTIN’. I really dont know why but my legs were killing me. So in true runner fashion i feel I must make up some kind of excuse: not enough sleep…didn’t stretch enough…too cold..too hot… wasted too much energy this weekend preparing for the end of the world…or maybe cause i’m still saddened by the loss of pro wrestler, Manch Man Randy savage Lol. Well, whatever it was i’ll try and fix it tomorrow

here’s an interesting link from the wordpress home page

http://runstreet.com/2011/04/27/running-motivation/