VT Dad’s fight vs. inertia & flab

I’ve been having chest pains for the past 5 days or so.  My wife told me that since it was my chest that was hurting, it was time to see the doctor.  I saw the doctor today, and everything looked, sounded and felt normal.  She recommended that I would get better with rest, with only 10 opportunities to play basketball before my summer is over, I think I’ll wait to then to rest.

With my daughter’s swim season complerted, my Tuesday nights are now free to play ultimate frisbee.  There is a coed league in Burlington, which I had joined, but I hadn’t been able to play in any games until tonight.   I played tonight and found out that I am slow.  A basketball court is 94 feet, and all action goes towards the basket.  I can make up what I lack in speed with guile and experience, but the field tonight was 80 yards by 25 yards, with the end zones another 20 yards wide.  This large field exposed my lack of speed.   There was a lot of relaxed running followed by sharp cutting and sprinting.  I am slow.  Sharp cutting and sprinting are things I haven’t done in 20 years on a playing field.

The game was 7 vs 7 and coed, with the ideal mix of 5 guys and 2 girls on the field.  Our team had only 5 guys and 5 girls, so we sometimes played 5 and 2 and sometimes played 4 and 3.  The game was to 15 and lasted ~95 minutes.  We lost 15-10.  My highlight was that I scored twice.  This was a great workout, forcing me to adress my foot speed and agility, and is something I should do a lot of during the remainder of the summer.  However, the  bottom line is that I’m slow, and will have to improve substantially if I have any chance of  approaching my lofty October goals.

This past week consisted of 4Xbasketball, and a couple of pliometric shoe workouts.  

This week I want to get more running into my schedule
Monday/Wednesday/Friday Base Run 6-7.5 miles
Tuesday Hill Run
Thursday Tempo run (5 miles at 1/2 marathon goal pace 7:38 miles)
Saturday 16 mile long run.

In addition I want to add 3/4 evening plimetric shoe sessions, 3/4 evening core stability sessions, and play basketball 3/4 times this week.

I’ve spent much of this summer rudderless, doing what I’d like to do, but without really paying attention to wha my goals are, and wher I am headed.  It’s time to regain focus, and start working towards a goal.  My goal race, October 5th is a 1/2 Marathon, 73 days away.  I hope to shatter my PR of ~1:56 for a half marathon, aiming sub 1:40.  This is an awesome task, I’ll need to shave my pr 1/2 marathon time by ~ 1:17 per mile.  

During my 2 month malaise since my marathon, I’ve eschewed in favor of doing what I like, playing basketball.  That neeeds to change now.  I need to add speed work, and a long run back into my weekly routine.  

In addition I’ve gotten back on the salty food band wagon, and have put on a dozen+ pounds since the marathon.  I need to lay off the chips, and get down to my running weight of sub 190.  I have issued myself a challenge to drop get below 190 in 17 days, so It’s good bye chips.

The last thing that I need to change is to return to my good sleeping habits…. I guess that will have to start by getting to bed early later tonight, as I already should have been asleep 2 hours ago tonight.

While playing basketball Monday, I reached for a loose basketball, and felt pain.  My right hand ring finger was at a 60 degree angle.  Right then I had another player pull my finger and pop it into place.  My finger popped back into place, and all I had to deal with is the pain.  Subsequently, I taped the ring finger and middle finger together, and have been running around close to 100%, including another session of basketball yesterday.

So far this summer,  I haven’t challenged my pottential.  I am content playing basketball 3-4 times a week, doing some core work occassionally.  I think where I’ve been sliding the most is my sleep, I’ve been staying up too late, which makes it hard to get up early to run.   For me to try to make improvements I need to find a spark somewhere.

My only run for the week was a hill repeat run.  My tempo run got waylaid by time demands from one kid, my long run was intterupted by time demands from another kid. On the positive side, I did a better job getting my plio&core workouts in.

Training schedule for July 14-20"
Proprioceptive cue:  Butt Squeeze
Monday:  Basketball, bosu, and stability ball
Tuesday:  Hill Repeats
Wednesday: Basketball, pliometric shoes, bosu ball
Thursday: Tempo Run:  8.5 mile run with 4X1 mile @ 10K pace (8:05 miles) or long run 15 miles
Friday: Basketball, bosu, stability
Saturday:  Long Run 15 Miles or 5K race
Sunday: OFF

So I went to the top of the hill this evening to run through a basketball workout while wearing my pliometric shoes. I had finished the basketball part of the workout, and I was 1/3 of the way done with the fitness part of my workout when my youngest came up to be with me.  Together we shot around, and played basketball for another 20+ minutes.  It’s cool that she is starting to enjoy basketball, and tonight we got to hang out for a bit and play some ball together.

This morning I was able to squeeze in 4 games of basketball before I had to pick up my youngest from her basketball camp.  My team went 3-1, and although I didn’t contibute much on offense, I was a force on defense.  We played well as a team, and I had a lot of fun.

This evening I brought the bosu ball to my daughter’s swim practice.  I got in a good core workout.  My workout has 3 supersets: the 1st with 3 exercises, the second with 4 exercises, and the third with 3 exercises (3 sets with 10 reps each).  Usually I do the first to sets balancing on the bosu ball, and the third set on the ground.  Today I even did 2 of the 3 exercises from the third set on the bosu ball as well.

Again my daughter had a morning swim practice, and again I decided to exercise while she was swimming.  It was already 70F, 21C by 7AM, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to go for a run. Today was my hill day, and I chose a loop that was ~1&1/3 miles with some good hills.  I pressed on the hills, both uphill and downhill, while relaxing on the flats.  I ran 3 loops and finished, just as practice was ending.  It felt great to be out running again.