Wednesday, July 7, 2010

(Your love is like a) Heat Wave

Math is hard, and I’m apparently bad at counting.

I went over my training schedule last night to figure out what my running requirements were for the week of August 14, which happens to be the date when yet another standardized test will decide my academic fate....

Ah yes, the (wonderful) GRE.

I was very relieved to see that my long run for that week isn’t terrible and can easily be done before or after the test. But, I did notice that something was a little off when I started filling in the dates in my Excel sheet.

Basically, I can't count. When I made the schedule I thought I had 18 weeks plus one "base week" to ease into running. Not so much. As it turns out, I have 18 weeks including the base week, but I imagine that there are worse things that could happen.

Aaaaaaanyway, since my long runs increase every two weeks (last week was eight, this week I’m back to six, and next week I’ll do ten, for example), it just means that I’ll skip one of the weeks when I reduce the distance. (Friends who run: That's not a huge deal, right?) I’ll most likely fudge with the weeks after my test date. Even though I know that it would be tons of fun, I really would prefer not to take a four-hour exam and run more than eight miles in a single day.

In other news ---

I signed up for Shape.com's virtual trainer the other day. The site allows you to track calories (consumed and burned), provides recipes, and has plenty of hot tips to get the summer bod you've always dreamed of. (Honestly, the last piece is not my style. But, I am very excited about the recipes and calorie journal.) It's been very useful so far and has forced me to think about getting healthy amounts of calories and eating the right foods for proper nutrition. The American flag cake (thanks to 17 and Baking) that I baked for the fourth is excellent for calories but not so great for everything else. Except a sugar high. A reaaaaaally big sugar high.

If you haven’t heard, it’s bloody hot in DC. Yesterday’s high temperature rose somewhere around 103 degrees. (Yesterday was one of the many times it’s appropriate to quote Ron Burgundy: “It's so damn hot! Milk was a bad choice.") I saw a few brave souls running outside yesterday evening, but I'm not that crazy and decided to move training indoors. Four miles on the treadmill sounds boring at first, but sensory overload definitely helps pass the time. I had music and watched most of an episode of Bones until some annoying person changed the channel to watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Thank goodness I was at the end of mile four when that happened. I was very comfortable at a 10:00 minute pace, but I increased the speed during my last mile just for fun. Surprisingly, it went well. After my run, I went back up to my apartment for electrolyte replacement, post-run stretching, a warm shower, towel time (my favorite time), and GRE time (not my favorite time, but I don't feel nearly as stupid as I did when I first started this process).

Hm...there are quite a few links in this post. Oh well, here's one more for you -- one woman's tale of running and reinvention. Inspiring? You bet it is!

1 comment:

  1. hey alisha! definitely be careful and listen to your body when adjusting your training plan, but since most plans are meant to be flexible, i think you'll be fine (i'm no expert but my boyfriend got super into his marathon training and told me a lot about it and i've read some stuff). i wanted to share a link with you! www.sparkpeople.com. it's kinda like self in that it has food logs (and a giant data base of foods (including all different brands and member entered foods) with nutrition info on them all), work out videos (FREE), and workout logs along with tons of information and inspirational articles. i would definitely recommend checking it out. it's completely free and the site has a great philosophy behind it (which is why it's free...cause health shouldn't be only for those who can afford it, let's be honest). anyway, glad to see you're surviving the heat, can't wait to keep reading!

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