Strawberry Fields

Wanted to share this scene from my Christmas-vacation running adventures. Awoke on a Sunday morning and headed out from our motel in Ventura. It was crisp, clear, and lovely! We were on the edge of town, right where agriculture (see above) meets urban encroachment (see below). After I haven't run for two straight days, as was the case on this day, I'm always pleased and amazed to find that my body takes to it like the proverbial duck to the proverbial H2O.
So now I'm home, it's January, and I'm easing into the preliminary marathon-training schedule I have penciled into my 2009 calendar. We're having a chilly (wintry!) winter, but I'm finding that if I jerk myself out the door before I'm fully awake that I'm pretty warm by the time I've run a mile or so and am coming to consciousness.

As part of my training (doing The Ave again this year, which falls on May 3), I'm working on overall strength and fitness. I find the easiest time to do this is when I'm dressed in workout clothes and already in motion--in other words when I'm on a run. Yesterday this meant that when I went to enter my run in my trusty running log, I had more non-running-related information to enter than stats from the actual run. Here's what I did:
  • 20 crunches
  • 40 bicycle kicks
  • 20 lurches on the parallel bars (I call them lurches for lack of a better name--I'm not going back and forth on the bars very well yet--stay tuned for progress reports)
  • 21 push-ups (7 each on the lowest, middle, and highest bars, which I stop at along the running path--I call them Baby Bear, Mama Bear, and Papa Bear. That Baby is a bear)
  • 3 runs along narrow, free-standing curbs--done for balance
In addition to these exercises, I do painful core "stuff" at the end of the run (plank! ugh!). Also, I'm working on making the runs themselves purposeful. Yesterday was "speed." The word has to stay in quotes for a while, until the day "speed" equates to anything resembling "fast." I guess it's all relative, really (chug, chug).

Tomorrow I'm running in SF around 5:30 with my friend and co-worker M, who is training for the LA Marathon, on March 1. We'll be in the dark, although the lights along the Embarcadero should help. Just trying to keep my running (and my life) a bit interesting.

Shalom, hip-hop hooray, keep breathing, and have a doggone nice day.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Fantastic, you are my sunshine... and inspiration. Training is full steam (rather than hot air)ahead.
10:36 AM
Bob said…
holy cats - that's a workout - i wanna be you when i grow up!
3:18 PM
Sunshine said…
Inspiring to read about your training .. and exciting to hear about your race plans!
Loved hearing from you.
11:11 AM
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