Module 3: Day 2

I love this turn off in the park. We are very fortunate to live across the street from a beautiful park. It sure does help with training regularly. I read somewhere that you can tell a die hard cyclist / runner because they will choose to live closer to the trails and farther away from work so they can get the long ride to the office in the morning and wake up next to the trails on the weekend.

Running is challenge for me mostly because of previous injuries, but it is a hard sport. It's hard on the body. My new goal is to work on my form during the longer portions of my run to avoid plopping on the pavement and be a bit lighter on my feet. I mean, did you ever watch seasoned, long distance runners in action. It's like their gliding. They make it look effortless. Sometimes when I'm running in the park or just walking the dog, I'll watch them go by. You can feel the breeze caused by their movement and smell the scent of effort.

Today it hit 90 degrees and was supposed to storm horribly. Fortunately this did not happen - the storm that is; but let me tell you - it was really hot.

I brisk walked through the first layer of the park until I found the perfect spot over looking the lower layer that circles the lake and did a series of martial art warm ups. I promised myself that I would not cop out on my warm ups and stretching anymore, especially since I don't want to wake up screaming from muscle spasms in my calf.

Doing those sorts of warm ups with a beautiful view like that gives me so much energy. I'm getting more confident to do these movements outside. It's been a long time and sometimes I feel self conscious practicing these motions in public.

When I felt my heart rate increased enough and I started a light sweat, I grabbed my stop watch and hit the pavement. The challenge in doing this today was to not stress the distance since the temperature was so high. I can see progress happening already. The three minute run is still a struggle, but my feet weren't as tired and sore as the last run. I actually saw progress mostly in the 90 seconds portions of the run. I kept running past the 90 seconds which means my body is acclimating well. The challenge in module 3 is that I'm only running 90 / walking 90 and then doing the same with the 3 minutes twice. That means I only have two times to get it right, unlike the previous modules where you are repeating the same exercise for the same amount of time over and over for 20 minutes.

My next run is with my cousin on Saturday morning and from this weeks experience so far I came up with a game plan to enhance the 3 minutes and take the focus away from the jarring of my feet and joints during that time span. I'll write about that game plan after I try it out on Saturday, so check back.

Later Gators!