Tag Archive for 'YMCA'

Eleven

Today, in accordance with my training plan for the miniMarathon, I completed 11.25 miles. I followed the route below. I only had a general plan before I started out; I just added on some streets to a pretty consistently run 8-mile route to give me more miles.

Today's route

I enjoyed the run. For me, there isn’t such a thing as running “junk miles.” I don’t run enough miles every week to warrant any such classification. Nor am I a speed demon. I do have specific goals in races, but those are mainly just side benefits to be out there, running. Here are my Garmin watch numbers for the day:

Total Time (h:m:s) 1:54:40 10:11 pace
Distance (mi) 11.25  
Moving Speed (mph) 5.9 avg. 11.4 max.
Elevation Gain (ft) +940 / -941  
Temperature (F) 42.8 F avg. 42.8 F high
Wind Speed (mph) W 14.4 avg. W 14.9 max.

The miles went a lot better for me than on last week’s 10 mile run. However, I am still inconsistent in my pace. Since I run alone, I think I have a tendency to not be as aware of an ideal, efficient pacing. Maybe I should advertise in the want-ads.

Wanted: Running partner to train for half marathon. Desire to run the mini in under 2 hours, so an experienced training partner who can help me achieve that goal would be a plus. Buy you a beer after.

Here is a table of my lap times today:

Lap # Time (m:s) Distance (mi)
1 7:57 1
2 9:19 1
3 10:02 1
4 11:56 1 (messed with earphones)
5 10:05 1
6 10:06 1
7 10:02 1
8 10:12 1
9 11:17 1
10 10:30 1
11 11:02 1
12 2:06 0.22

Oh, a final, humorous side benefit of today’s training run. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I track my running on FitLinxx, a website that shares data with the Downtown YMCA where I work out. After I logged the humongous amount of calories I burned on the run, it put me into the number one spot in males my age there, as you can see in the graphic below. Eat your heart out, “Facility Users” and mwebster52, whoever you are. :)

Eat your heart out, please!

Injury impact

It’s interesting to note what a difference that the hip flexor injury has made to my burgeoning pursuit of running. Back in August when I finally decided to get fit, I started going to the gym in addition to running and dieting. I have always tried to nuture left-brain as well as right-brain activity, so I noticed the gym (YMCA) had an online facility to track my progress, called FitLinxx. When I use certain strength machines at the Y, it automatically logs my workouts, but you can add cardio sessions separately online, which I have been doing. Their website has a home page where you can compare your current monthly numbers to your previous month. As you can see in the screenshot I took from the site and pasted below, my December cardio is way, way off from last month at this same time, down from almost 16 hours of running last month by this date (the 22nd) to 5.5 hours of running this month. And calories burned is down 16,607 to 6,791.

The good news though is I am still losing weight, just a lot slower. And I still feel a whole lot better than I did in terms of energy capacity. But daggone, getting old has its drawbacks. :)

Stats comparison Nov 22 to Dec 22, 2007