What is a PR?

Ok so I've pretty much quit thinking I'm gonna PR at San Antonio. I just haven't got the motivation right now to force myself through the workouts. I'm always tired and even when I get 8 hours of sleep I feel like I could sleep 2 more hours.

I think I'm gonna shoot for 8:30 min/miles... nothing spectacular but I can't waste the money I've spent on the race. Maybe when Mayzie gets older I'll try and get more serious about doing a half in under 1:30.

Vacation

OK I took a vacation, I didn't mean to but work go in the way and I was forced to conceed my workouts. HOWEVER!! I am back to work this week, although I did miss a spin class I wanted to go to yesterday. Today I had a difficult and easy workout. It was 10min warmup @ 8:30 pace and 3 x 1600m @ 6:18min/mile pace. It wasn't too bad, they were fast enough to get your heart rate up and start to make you feel the pace but 1 mile goes by quick at a 6:18min/mile pace and I had 400m of rest interval and given that it was only 3 it made it feel easy... er. Average heart rate was 148, max 181 , 558 calories, 4.5 miles in 36 mins which included the 1 mile warm-up at 8:30 and the RI @ 8:30 and a cool down. Not bad... not pro, but not bad.

I think I'm about as ready as I can be for San Antonio 13.1, it is going to be a tough race because I haven't been consistent in running at all. 7:30 is going to be my goal and I'll need help from my running group.

Finally

Ok so I finally got a long run in Sunday... it was hard, but it felt good. We averaged a 8:25 over 7 miles but it was really faster since we had to stop at several stop lights and we stopped to get some water. While we were running we maintained a 7:22pace so that's not bad although I didn't feel exactly fun while it was going on, we covered the first 4 miles quick.

I feel outta shape but maybe it's mental

Today my swim workout was great, felt good. I only swam 800meters because I wanted to get to work early but still it was still a pretty good workout. Averaged was 28min/mile so it was a good pace.

The Dreaded Key #1 Workout (Intervals)

OMG!! Have I complained enough about interval workouts? They are really really hard. I don't ever remember them being this hard. I'm starting to think that maybe I do need to eat more carbs. I don't know, what it is but man these are hard. Maybe I'm just trying to go to fast.

5 x 1k (400m RI) @ 5:55min/mile... geez it just about killed me and the thing is it doesn't sound all that hard. It is a 5k with 1/4 mile rest intervals. How hard can that be? Yeah right...

The first one is hard because you're legs are used to the pace, but Heart Rate was low and the interval passes fast enough, but it is still hard. The rest are just hard because your body just went into shock from the first interval. Sometimes I wish I was just a coach and could force people to do these workouts and then enjoy their success without really doing any hard work.

Anyway, it is over but I'm dreading next week's interval already.

Eating not so processed

Ok so I not only want to be a fast runner/triathlete, I really want to be sustainably healthy. I know I'm not always going to be able to run 5min/miles although I know a guy in his 60's that can. I'm not always going to have the time to "train," as I like to call it, but I can do things to help keep me healthy without spending a lot of time training.

I heard a motto from someone who is extremely into the healthy eating organic vegetarian crazy. Which by the way I am not. However, it did make me re-think, ok scratch that, actually think about what I'm eating. The motto was, "I avoid eating anything with a barcode." I had mostly been eating small pre-made meals, like SmartOnes or other lean options. They have a lot of salt and you really can't control any part of how it is made except how hot it gets in the microwave. Now again I'm not an extremist but it got me to think about my food choices and how fresh they are. My first attempts were to eat more fruits instead of hard candy. I had some varied success, mostly eating more fruit, which was good, but not necessarily cutting out the candy.

I don't really like salads, so I resorted to cooking and grilling vegetables or steaming frozen vegetables. This worked well up until the baby was born. Then I ate everything people brought over and didn't exercise. I gained 9lbs. Now I've started eating more salads because I'd like to lose some weight and I want to keep my salt and carb intake down. Plus I want to make sure I get all my nutrients in without vitamins. This coupled with the fact that my wife and I have less money, we've had to really plan better for our meals. Last month, not so good. This month, we've done great so far. One of the benefits of planning is we could buy fresh things to eat at home and take to work. Everyday I eat a salad, and take some kind of vegetable. Today I ate a tuna fish sandwich and a chicken sandwich to help get some protein.

It still has a lot of processed stuff, like the tuna, the chicken and the bread, but remember I'm not an extremist but I have added the vegetables and salads so that I'm not eating ALL processed foods.

Sleep

I don't know how most people are, but I have to have close to 8 hours of sleep. If I don't I don't even remember turning off my alarm. Despite telling myself before I go to bed, no matter what you have to get up in the morning to workout. I don't even know I've turned off my alarm!! Even if I do manage to get to the gym when I'm that tired, I normally just sit in the hot tub.

SO maybe I need to focus more on getting sleep instead of what workout I'm going to do in the morning.

Baby baby baby!

Ok so the baby is great. I love the baby. I can't describe how much I love the baby. I would do anything for the baby. BUT the baby woke up a lot last night. I still got a lot of sleep, thanks to my great and also tired wife. However, when you don't get continuous sleep, you might as well not have gotten much sleep....

I slept in, that's right I didn't just hit the snooze, I turned off the alarm! That's bad... really bad when you have a half-marathon coming up in 6 weeks. Even more so when you have a 100k race coming up in 15 weeks.

The thing is we know she can sleep through the night, just not last night. oh well she is a cute baby.

I'm probably not going to get to workout today... if that wasn't enough, today was food day at work. I really need to do something.