Pushup Update and Hill

Andrew, at Andrew is Getting Fit, termed the 100 Pushup Challenge as not easy. That's an understatement. I think impossible is closer to the truth. I couldn't get through day 1!! (sad face) I did the first two sets (10 each set) and 2 pushups of the 3rd set with my arms and lats screaming at me the whole time -- still sore from the initial test. After the 2nd pushup of the 3rd set, I just collapsed. I'm a weak wimp -- oh, well, let's go for a long run.


Today was hill day (picture above is from the top looking down -- the white mailbox on the right is our finish line). Whoa! Pretty tough. Yeah, I know, it doesn't look that bad but that's the weakness of a 1-dimensional picture. Can a picture on a computer screen be 2-dimensional? Here are the results in order of fastest hill to slowest. Each uphill was about .13 miles with a climb of somewhere between 42' (gMap-Pedometer) and 60' (coach's Garmin) and was punctuated by a slow downhill:

# -- Seconds
6 -- 51.58
1 -- 51.72
5 -- 52.13
4 -- 52.52
3 -- 52.87
2 -- 53.39
Variance: 01.81 seconds between fastest and slowest

I've got a sore patella tendon -- it's not bad but I'm icing and taking a low dosage of ibuprophen. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, I'll have a Chopat strap (patella band) to use when I run for the next few weeks.

Run well, y'all,
Bob

Ahhhhh!

What a difference 10° makes. After months of 120° at 5:30 AM -- OK, no, hyperbole alert! -- let's try that again, it just felt like months of 120°. After 4+ days of 74° and 84%+ humidity at 5:30 AM, this morning it was 64° and 83% humidity. It felt so good and I was so glad. I was scheduled to do my first ever hill workout with the Patrick Henry Half Marathon training group and doing that in the heat/humidity combination of the last several days was not going to be pleasant.

About 12 of us met up and did an easy 1 mile warm-up (9:42) and then began our hill workout. The hill was 0.13 miles with an elevation gain of roughly 60'. Based on the pace chart that had been distributed and my goal for the half, I was counting on doing the repeats at 1:16.4. But, having no idea how fast that really was, I just followed the coach. When we turned around at the top, we had done the hill in 53.16 -- hard but not a killer. I ended up doing 5 repeats and was tired but not totally exhausted. It was fun doing that with a group, too -- much better than it would have been by myself.

Here are the figures:

Up: 0:53.16
Down: 1:31.39
Up: 0.54.97
Down: 1:30.14
Up: 0:53.26
Down: 1:32.26
Up: 0:51.67
Down: 1:31.92
Up: 0:51.62

We ended with a .71 mile cool down. When I got home, I did an additional 2 miles to get a total of 4.9 miles at an overall average pace of 8:26 mpm.

After all my moaning yesterday, it looks like at least most of the bad of the last couple of weeks has been, in fact, the weather. I'm just no acclimated to summer mornings, yet.

Run well, y'all,
Bob