I am going climbing

Today's workout was quite long and quite intense. Not sure if I can do a day like this every week.

Started with a 4.2 mile interval run. I programmed my watch for cutdowns. After a manual warmup period (jog up to the park) and some stretching, there were to be five repeats: .1, .2, .3, .2, and .1 miles. Unfortunately, I'm teh stoopid and don't know how to operate my watch. So it was giving my auto-laps, still, at 1 mile periods, instead of beeping to begin and end the repeats. I pretty quickly had to make up my intervals. Which is fine, because the two-minutes rest between wasn't enough.




If you look at the graph, you'll see way to many lap markers. Here's what happened: marker 1: one mile point.
marker 2: this is where I began my first repeat. You can see where my heartbeat dropped a lot while stretching at the park entrance and the pace drops off to nothing.
marker 3: second mile - I'd already figured out that the proper watch indicators weren't happening, so you see a dip in pace and heartrate as I try to figure out what the hell is going on. Also the start of my second repeat
marker 4: after a rest, this is the start of my third repeat; difficult to keep up and I'm not sure I made 3/10s of a mile
marker 5: end of 3rd repeat - during this interval, my heartrate recovers a little bit but pace varies between walking and jogging - stride length dips, of course - I felt really wiped out here
marker 6: beginning of fourth repeat
marker 7: third mile mark
marker 8: end of fourth repeat. Recovery was difficult.
marker 9: start of last repeat. This one was a real 1/10 mile hard run, up an incline. I was amazed at this point how much power I could pour on. Felt better than the other repeats, but I was wiped at the end of that couple hundred yards.
marker 10: end of repeats, beginning of recovery. WALKING, coughing, gasping for air; praying that all this speedwork will actually pay off
marker 11: start of recovery jog home. to the end of the run, notice the average pace is about a 9:30 mile, compared to 12:19 during my warmup. Easy to maintain, could have gone a couple of miles.
marker 12: fourth mile mark

Very hard run, but good. Too lumpy for what was supposed to be a structured interval workout - will have to figure out the watch a little better.

Got home, ate a very quick lunch, and left or the gym. Having done no crosstraining or core exercises yesterday, I had to make it up today. Very nice having a place to go. I started with foam rolling. A trainer came over and talked with me; told me to roll slower and showed me a couple of other ways to use the foam roller for calves and hamstrings. He seemed to know just what a runner needs. I did a lot of weights work today, including all the kind of work I'd be doing at a sports therapist's office. I also included some upper-body weights work, which served only to teach what a weakling I actually am. On the other hand, some of the guys there with rather large muscles were benching what looked to be these huge barbells - that turned out to be less than 100 pounds. Rubber-encased weights are much lighter than they look. I'm not knocking the ability to bench 90 pounds, but for the size of these guys muscles, they should have been able to pump out a few more reps at that weight... Hm. I'll have to see what I can bench...probably not much.

Anyway, having the gym's equipment to hand was really nice. It made the situps, back extensions, Swiss hip extensions, single-foot balance, and pullups a whole lot more pleasant. Not easier, mind you, but not as hard on my hands or spine.

My plan is to get some work done tomorrow, then go back to the gym for actual crosstraining - 30 minutes on stationary bike. I will have to do the core exercises again, to get back on track, but will not do any weights. I may go climbing upstairs in their climbing gym, though. To do that, I have to break into my storage shed - I can't find the key anywhere - and get my climbing shoes out.

I asked about swim classes. Turns out they have a free class for beginners. I think I'll start there. They also have a stretching and strengthening class targeted towards runners. If there's a real weak point in my whole running thing right now, it's flexibility.