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People are always talking about making lists of adventurous things they'd like to accomplish during their lifetime. Here's my list, and what follows are notes about what I'm currently up to.
16 kmApril 8, 2007
On Friday, I joined our Running Room group as we embarked on our attempt of 16 km. It strikes me odd that our program was structured to have the long weekly run at 10 km for a month and a half, and then wham, increases to 12 km, 14 km, then 16 km, over just three weeks! This week has been a struggle for me. After my 14 km last week, I felt some tightness developing in my left leg, about four inches above the ankle. The next day I should have run really slowly and let the group get away from me, but not only did I keep up, I felt energetic so I stayed to the front of the group. When I got done my run, that left leg felt very tight, almost to the point of feeling injured. I came home and put ice on it, elevated it, and tried to rest it as much as possible the next two days. I think that helped, but having a 16k run on Friday was rough. I simply couldn't keep up with the group. Rather than quit and go home, I decided the best thing was just to take it very slow and try to favor my right leg a bit to take some additional stress off of my left leg. I made it, and by the end, my left side felt fairly loosened up. Not to my suprise, my right side now feels a little strained from overcompensating! So I'm not sure where to go from here. I should probably talk to my chiropractor about getting some ART (active release therapy) done on my calf muscles to work out some of the tightness and possible scar tissue, but that doesn't answer the question of how I should modify the training program so that I maximize the benefits while mitigating the risk of injuring myself. Flight simulator
March 1, 2007
I've been enjoying my time with Microsoft Flight Simulator X these past three months, and recently completed my first simulated solo. The in-game flight instructor is good for the most part, but occasionally there are glitches. One flight as I was trying to navigate over a mountain range near Seattle, Washington, the flight instructor warned me to descend. I was only a few hundred feet above the mountain, so I ignored his warning. He then sternly repleated "DESCEND", so I obliged and crashed right into the hillside! Landings are definately the most interesting and difficult aspect of the flight simulator. Timing the turn onto final approach so that you're lined up with the runway seems like a bit of a guessing game at this point for me, and making corrections after that point can be quite tricky. Overall the game has been a great experience and I look forward to continuing to work through the in-game lessons.
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Running
March 1, 2007
After two months the half-marathon training is going great. A typical week at this stage is: Sun9k, Tue5k, Wed5k, Thu3k, Sat4k. Sundays are the "long slow run", and each week we increase our distance by about 10%. This last week has been easier than the week before. I think my legs are finally getting used to things, and I've lost 10 lbs since the start of January. My heart rates have started to come down, but they're still relatively high. My recovery times are also better. On Sunday, after running 2k and hovering at 150 bps, I stopped for about a minute and my heart rate fell steadily to 99 bps, which I think is pretty good. Three months until race time!
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