Fall Fitness Goals
Summer is over, with mixed results. On the plus side, I achieved my pushups goal of 55 in one set before Labor Day, the first time I’ve done that in my life. I lowered by bodyfat percentage a little bit, and I achieved personal best times in the 5K, 8K, 10K, and 10 miles between May and September (O.K., the 8K and 10K were my first races at those distances, but still).
On the negative side, I injured my Achilles tendon in July, setting me back in my running a little. Now that it’s over it doesn’t seem to have hurt my speed much, but my mileage base is way off where I wanted it to be. I had hoped by Labor Day to be running 40 plus miles per week, and I’m only at 20 miles per week. I plan to get that over 30 this week by the end of Sunday, but I still don’t have the base I wanted to have to train for the December marathon. My legs feel pretty strong, though, and I think I can ramp up.
The injury hurt my diet plans, too, because I suddenly wasn’t burning the calories I was when I was running 35 to 40 miles per week. So I essentially have lost no weight since May, after some initial very encouraging loss in June. My body seems to want to hold steady at 172 pounds, and it resists any effort to get under that.
My goals for this fall:
1. Run California International Marathon again, and improve my personal best marathon time by at least 10 minutes and finish under 3:10
2. Finish a half marathon (probably the Cowtown in three weeks) in under 1:30.
3. Finish a 10K in under 40 minutes (this is the most challenging goal)
4. Get weight under 168.
5. Hold my ability to do 55 pushups in a single set (I’ll concentrate on improving it later)
6. Get bodyfat percentage under 15%, from current level of somewhere around 17 something % (it varies a lot day to day)
September 17, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Great goals, good luck with them. I hope to run Boston in 2010, I know you’ve qualified, love to meet you before the race start.