Posts from December 9, 2007

Looks like I've got a little catching up to do again. I finished Week 1 of Hal Higdon's Novice 10K Training Program this morning, but before I get into that, let me cover days 4 through 7:

Week 1, Day 4

Week 1, day 4 called for a 2 mile run and strength training, so I knew that this would be a really good workout. I started off with my two mile run, using the treadmill. Here are some stats:

• Warm up: 5:04 (walking)
• Mile 2: 10:18
• Mile 3: 10:32
• Cool down: 3:01 (walking)

Total distance covered was 2.51 miles.

The strength portion of the workout was an upper body circuit workout. The workout is based on a strength workout from Body for Life, where you work chest, back, shoulders, triceps, and biceps, doing 4 sets of each with increasing effort and diminishing repetitions. What this means is that for each body part, you do 12, 10, 8, and 6 rep sets, with the effort level required for each set increasing from 5, 6, 7, and finally to 8, on a scale of 1-10. In the original program, you follow the 6 rep set with two back-to-back sets of 12 with an effort level of 9 and 10. Also, you are supposed to rest 1 minute after each of the first 4 sets, and then 2 minutes after the back-to-back sets. The modification I made to this is dropping the back-to-back sets, and instead of doing all of one body part at a time before moving on to the next body part, I went through 1 set for each body part, without resting any longer than it took to move to the next station, for a complete circuit. I did 4 circuits, starting with 12 reps for each set, and working down to 10, 8, and 6 reps with each additional circuit, while increasing the effort level (in this case, increasing the weight). Between each circuit, I rested for 1 minute.

Week 1, Day 5

Rest day! I did clean the house, which took some effort and is definitely work, but we can hardly count that, right? I'll be honest, taking a day off was a little tough, but it was nice, and needed.

Week 1, Day 6

Week 1, day 6 called for 40 minutes of cross-training. The plan was to do 40 minutes of cardio, and to get a good choice of equipment, I did this workout at the gym. Here's the breakdown of the workout:

• 10 minutes on the bike at various resistance levels, always trying to spin at about 100 RPMs.
• 10 minutes on the elliptical cross-trainer, doing 2 minute intervals, changing the resistance and crossramp levels to increase or decrease the effort required.
• 20 minutes on the treadmill, doing a combination of walking at increased elevation, and slow jogging at increased elevation (basically 1 minute hill repeats, with 1 minute walking recovery).

Week 1, Day 7

Here we are, the last day of week 1. Today was my "long" run. I say "long," because it was a relatively short 3 miles, though it is still about the furthest I've run at one time. Hal says to run the long runs nice and slow, so that's what I did:

• Warm up: 5:04 (walking)
• Mile 1: 11:29.46
• Mile 2: 11:16.45
• Mile 3: 11:45.79
• Cool down: 2:32.80 (walking)
• 10 minutes of stretching

I did this run outside. Did I mention that a cold front came through last night and that the temperature was 38 degrees during my run, with a stiff wind out of the north? Overall, it was a good run.

So now you know the rest of the story of week 1. (Oh, I also dropped 3 lbs. this week.) On to week 2!