gokennergo.com

Hello all. Welcome back.

So that Fartlek run the other night was interesting. Interesting and difficult. We ended up doing blind, random intervals. That means that after we warm up we run for a predetermined amount of time (in this case, 20 minutes) and one of the coaches stands in the middle of the track blowing the whistle at timed intervals. The "random" part is that the intervals are randomly chosen, and the "blind" part is that we are not allowed to know what they are beforehand. You basically have two different speeds that you run: 1) fast (i.e. faster than your normal running "comfort zone") and 2) slow (i.e. a little bit slower than our LSD pace) -- also called "recovery", because that's what you're doing, recovering from your fast run. You start at a comfortable pace, then they blow the whistle to start the fast run. When they blow the whistle again, you go to your slow pace, and that interval is the same duration as the one immediately preceding it, so that you have the same amount of time to recover that you had to run fast. This is much harder than it sounds. The not knowing how long each interval is makes it very difficult, because you have to somehow hold back enough to keep the same, faster pace, without knowing for how much longer you have to maintain it. Please, no grammar checks of that last sentence.

Anyway, it was hard. My right IT band and my left hamstring were singing in a symphony of discomfort afterward, so I went straight home to stretch and ice them down.

Yesterday I had an abdominal CAT scan because of some very mild hematuria so I didn't work out in the morning. When I got back from my CAT scan I actually got promoted at work so I went out last night to celebrate with some friends. It's kind of amazing what that means now, time was it meant going out for extended drinking and laughter. Now it's going out for a nice dinner and going to Dave & Buster's to play some video games, then going home. Honestly, more fun, and the aftermath is much easier to deal with.

Today is a rest day, then 12 miles tomorrow! Stay tuned....
posted by Kenner Estes at 12:11 PM

Allow me to apologize for the lack of recent updates. I use blogger for this log (see link at the bottom of this page), and it works really well, but they've been having some problems lately with publishing updates, so I just haven't been posting.

Anyway, this week I feel like I'm back on track. I told you about Saturday's 10-miler, and Sunday was a much needed day of rest after that. Monday I did a little over 4 miles in the morning and yesterday I did my cross-training at the gym. For my strength training I did one thing that the physical therapist at AthletiCo suggested, which was to tie a resistance band between my feet and just step in place, side-to-side. That's to help strengthen my flanks, and I could really feel it after doing it for a while. I also did single-leg leg press, bicep curls, and tricep pushdowns. The physical therapist also suggested that I do my leg exercises one leg at a time, because that mimics what you are doing when you run. He stressed that running is not an activity that uses the strength of both legs; rather, it is a series of single-legged exercises. Makes sense to me, so that is how I'm handling my leg exercises moving forward.

Today is track training again, we're supposed to do a Fartlek run. Don't know what that is? Neither did I! Check these places for more info:

http://www.coolrunning.com.au/expert/1997c002.shtml
http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/fartlek.htm

I guess that's it for today. Take care everybody. -K
posted by Kenner Estes at 2:54 PM