10/10/10 is closing in fairly quickly. In 1 month and 5 days I will be mentally preparing for the morning of the race. What does this mean? Well it means that it is time to totally dedicate myself to this journey. Some may think I have been doing that for the past 4 months, and I won't belittle my effort, but it's time to take it to the next level. I have about 2-3 weeks to put in some really tough workouts before I need to start my taper. I need to do a few 2-a-day workouts, dedicate my weekends to workouts and not my social life, and develop a strict diet that will allow me to fuel my workouts and easily help me to shed the last few pounds to get me below 190. The diet aspect is important. I've done a fairly good job of utilizing simple carbs and proteins to fuel my workouts, but now I need to stay away from the late night fried foods. This will be made easier being that I've decided to "go dry" for the next 5 weeks. Now some of you may be a bit skeptical of my ability to do this, but this is not something new for me. During my rowing career there were times we would go dry for 4 months at a time. My plan will be to have a strict rule of 1 drink. As I've said before, to achieve my goal of 3 hours, I am going to need to do everything possible to achieve maximum performance. So it will probably a good investment to buy some Coca-Cola stock during this month, because I plan on consuming alot of powerade and diet coke.
Ok, now that we've covered that, lets talk about last week. Wednesday was my typical cross-training day, a simple upper body/core workout with 45 minutes of stationary bike work. Thursday was speed day. 4 x 1 mile with 2 min rest and 2 x .5 mile with 3 min rest. The goal was to get sub 6 min on each mile piece and burn out the last 2 half miles as fast as possible. It was a great workout. First 2 miles were well below 6 min, third was 6:01 and last was 5:58. I really think the half mile runs were really helpful. It pushed my heart rate easily over 200 bpm and on Friday I had that feeling you get after a hard lifting workout, where it feels like your muscles are actually getting stronger and rebuilding. Friday was a day off and Saturday was a big day... BIG day. Last week I ran just over 20 miles and coming into Saturday I wanted to significantly eclipse that distance. Luckily I had 2 BS reports saved up for this run. So I had a big bowl of oatmeal, a big mug of coffee, and packed a few "Gu's" into my pockets and headed out. I got to 10 miles without stopping and kept pushing until I got to 12 miles. If you haven't been South on the Chicago beach path, the city has done a great job at building up the area around the path. I kind of wish I took time to take some video actually. There was what I could only describe as a "professional" croquet court! A bunch of old guys in all white were whacking around a croquet stick on a beautiful kept croquet field (i will pause here for you to stop giggling from my usage of "whacking"). Now that you have exercised your allowed adolescent sensibilities, I can continue with the blog.... I ended up doing 24 miles in about 2 hrs: 50 mins. Its close to pace, and I had to stop at least 3-4 times for water on the way home. I'm learning quickly that my ability to achieve 3 hrs will depend on my ability to survive through 3 hours of pounding. My knees were sore as bejesus afterwards. I took some time to stretch and then it was time to bust out the frozen vegetable bags (see picture above). The combo of protein shake, iced vegies, and advil took away from some of the soreness. I would say I am on pace, its close, but if I continue working hard for the next 2-3 weeks, I will be as prepared as I could be to cross that line in 2hrs 59 min 59 sec.
Sunday was a day off although I kind of wish I went to gym and spent some time on the stationary bike just to loosen out the legs. Today I did a 10 mile run that was a little tight but my speed was at marathon pace + for the entire run.
Fund raising is going well. We've raised about $70 last week and are still inching on that $2000 mark. With everyones help I think we can go way past that mark! I really appreciate everyone who has donated early in this endeavor, it really has fueled my fire during my workouts, and will continue to for the next 5 weeks! Thanks for reading and hope you are enjoying the ride!
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