Posts Tagged ‘100 push-ups’

Some of you know him as British Bull Dog; some of you know him as the 100 push-ups guy; and some of you just know him as a runner. Meet Steve Speirs, all of the above, and then some. I started reading Steve’s blog some time ago and always enjoyed his race posts and his approach to blogging. Somewhere along the way we exchanged a few messages; he’s offered tremendous support on my 100 push-ups failure; and we’ve become what I think it a pretty good virtual friendship. One of these days we’ll actually meet in person. Oh, and you can find him on Daily Mile too. Now, onto my Q&A with Steve.

Q: Your first road race was a half marathon in 1982. In 28 years of racing, what is your favorite racing memory?
So many great memories, but the easy choice is my victory at the Cayman Islands Marathon towards the end last year (video below). Totally unexpected and something I will treasure for the rest of my life. Who would have thought a regular guy like me would ever win a marathon?

2009 Cayman Islands Marathon from steve speirs on Vimeo.

Q: What is one race you’d like to do, but haven’t had the chance to?
Probably the Comrades Marathon in South Africa. Bart Yasso recently described Comrades as “The ultimate race. The best race in the world.” I’m seriously toying with the idea of entering the 2011 event.

Q: What do you like most about running?
I love to challenge myself and constantly strive to reach my full potential, but also love to run for the relaxation and pure enjoyment it offers.

Q: What’s been the worst injury you’ve experienced, and how did you over come it?
In 2009 I pushed too hard in training and got a bit greedy with my races — ended up with a second metatarsal fracture after trying to run three 5Ks in one day (2 in a run~swim~run relay with my wife, and the other at a Twilight 5K in Crystal City). Rehab went surprisingly well — I biked daily and maintained upper body/core strength by doing one-legged push-ups. All I could think about was running again, and each day of “doing the right thing” would bring me closer to the goal. I can’t really explain the joy of my first post-stress fracture run, but my wife Ally captured it nicely on video for posterity:

First Post-Stress Fracture Run from steve speirs on Vimeo.

The video was taken in early September. By the end of 2009 I’d completed numerous 5Ks and 10Ks, a 10 Miler, half marathon, two marathons and my first competitive 50K. I guess I got lucky with my recovery?

Q: Lastly, what one piece of advice would you give to someone who just started running?
Just keep it fun, and if possible find someone you can share your love of running with. Aim to make it a lifestyle and not some chore you perform to bring other aspects of your life into balance.

If you’re interested in being a guest blogger or doing a Q&A, please contact me by filling out the form on the Contact page.

Previous Q&As and guest posts
* A Q&A with Half of Jess, June 2010
* A Q&A with 265andfalling’s Steve, April 2010
* Chrohn’s doesn’t mean can’t, December 2009
* But I did it anyway, September 2009
* Are we really born to run?, August 2009

Those of you who haven’t been runners all your life will know what I’m about to write about … it’s really tough to put yourself out there. It’s tough to set goals and make or beat them when you know other people are watching. Ever since I started writing about my running a few years ago, I have struggled a lot with being completely honest. I’ve shied away from setting goals or making them public with fear of letting myself down, and maybe letting others down.

But I’ve realized something this winter — my shell is coming off. I’m being as honest as I can with myself and have slowly let things out in my writing that I probably wouldn’t have before. I’ve been fully open about running changing me in the first third of 2010, but I often struggle with the right words — this post is part of that.

I’ve also realized this year that if I make my goals public, I will do them. And if I express any doubt in myself, I have a virtual support group out there that will pick me up. Last week I would not have made it to 100 miles in April if not for comments on this site and over on Daily Mile. Little comments of “you can do it” go a long way now. Three years ago I would have blown comments like that off, but hitting some of the lowest of lows in the past two years have taught me not to take things like that for granted.

So this all brings me to May. At the beginning of each new month I am finding myself wanting to set more and more realistic goals, which will all lead to a great year. While my running will continue to take center stage, I have to get my weight closer to where I want it to for this summer. So May is my reset button with nutrition and getting some more pounds off. I started the year at 197.2 — my highest in about four years and probably my highest since first losing weight in 2004 (highest was 220; I got down to 180). I’ve managed to get 8 pounds off so far, but that’s where it stops — 189.2 is a number that just keeps popping up on the scale.

The good news, I guess, is that I’ve maintained my weight. The bad news is that I ran a lot more in April and ate a lot of things that I shouldn’t have resulting in the “no change.” I got to where I wanted to be for Shamrock and I fortunately didn’t turn around and gain a few pounds back like usual, so that is a great thing. But for May, I have to refocus. If I can run every day in the month of April and hit 100-plus miles in a non-training month, then I can certainly lose 5 pounds this month. I won’t give this a cheesy name for the fifth month of the year, because that will set me up for failure. (See 31 in 31 for cheesy names and my failure to kick off the year.)

Simply put, I want to be under 185 by the time June gets here. I’ll worry about a number after that once I get there. If I can do this, marathon training is going to be fantastic this summer.

While I’m putting all this out there, I have once again started the 100 push-ups challenge. I was rolling along with this until I banged up my elbow in January, and I honestly had to separate myself from it for a while. I had to get over the disappointment again before re-starting. More on that later, but my initial test and day one went pretty well.

Thanks to everyone who has helped with the launching of this site in the past week. As part of celebrating the new site, I had a giveaway of Steve Speirs’ “7 Week to 100 Push-Ups” book on Facebook. Congrats to Grace, a longtime friend of mine, who came up as the winner using Random.org.

Be sure to check back tonight as I’m having another contest over the next day related to my 5K on Saturday.

Since fall of last year I have written several times about the 100 push-ups challenge … that I have yet to complete. That’s OK — one day I will. But here’s your chance to do it before me.

While the 100 push-ups website is great, there’s a book to accompany the site that can help you complete the program. It’s titled, quite simply, “7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups.” To help celebrate the launch of RunningBecauseICan.com, I am giving away a copy of this book, complete with a note and signature from author Steve Speirs.

To be entered to win a copy, become a fan of mine on Facebook. It’s that simple. Click here to find the fan page. Become a fan and invite your friends. Once I have 250 fans, everyone who is a fan by 9 p.m (ET) the day of the benchmark will be entered to win the book. It’s that simple.

This will be what I hope is the first of many giveaways as part of this new site. In addition to becoming a fan on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @RunningBecause to stay up to date with possible freebies.

Somewhere along the way in my blogging I stopped doing some sort of monthly reflection. And now that I’m back in full training mode, I think I’ve done myself a disservice doing that. Even in a down time, I think I should take a look back at the previous four plus weeks to look at the lessons learned, enjoy my successes one more time, figure out what went wrong and then forge ahead.

That being said, this January has been one of the craziest months I’ve experienced in a long time for many different reasons. It didn’t start well at all — I had a horrible cold and didn’t get in my first run until Jan. 4 — all of two miles. My big goal for the month was to do 31 exercises in 31 days — “31 in 31” as I called it — but that kind of fell apart after my big mountain run and was pretty beat up for a few days. However, I think it failed for more reasons than that — I didn’t plan well enough for it. Next time I try to do something like that, I have to plan it out better. Poor planning leads to poor results and I honestly did a poor job with that.

For a while this month, I was rolling along with the 100 push-ups program, but after falling in the mountains, my elbow was pretty sore for a few days, so I decided to take a week off with that. Things feel better now, so I hope that in February I can finally roll along with the program again. January surely wasn’t a complete disaster with this though — I did 591 push-ups overall.

January’s biggest highlight has been with my running. When Jan. 1 hit, I decided that it was time to move on from the previous two years. For me 2010 was a complete new start and that there was no need to compare this year to previous years. It’s not the easiest thing to do that, but I’ve pretty much have. It’s quite liberating to look ahead instead of looking behind. I think a once-a-month reflection, and a big once-a-year review, is enough.

So with running, I can simply look at my mileage — 75.3 — and be happy with that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled about passing 75 miles for the first month of the year. But those 75-plus miles have been through a bad cold, through cold weather, in shorts, in pants, in rain, in some pretty decent weather, through ice over a mountain and in the past two days through snow. I’ve done things I had no idea I could do, and I’ve done many things I simply wouldn’t normally do. Yesterday’s 2.5-mile run through snow and temperatures in the mid-teens put the icing on the cake for this month.

The next time I’m ready to make an excuse, all I have to do is look back at January 2010 to know that no excuse is good enough. It’s hard to believe all this has happened in the span of 31 days … here’s to the next 334 being just as great.

Here are a few photos from yesterday’s snow run. By the time it was over, we were just shy of another foot of snow.

This weekend was a blast. At the same time, though, it’s derailed my plans for the month. After a couple of falls during my run and due to the fact that I probably wasn’t ready for that big of an adventure, I have to hold off on “31 in 31.” My legs hurt too much to try something new for a couple of days and my right elbow is still sore from one of my falls. My body is out of whack and doing something new right now is not the smart thing to do.

That all being said, I’m still pretty jazzed up about what I did this weekend. And, fortunately, I’m not really injured — I’m just sore. I can keep running. I’ve learned a good lesson with “31 in 31″ and I’ll be more than ready to tackle something like that later this year. I need to plan it out more and stick to a schedule. I went day-by-day and that sort of thing just didn’t work.

Also, because of this soreness in my elbow, I’m putting the 100 push-ups program on hold too. I did a couple of push-ups last night and it felt OK, but today as I type my arm seems to stiffen up. As much as I think I could push through it, I don’t want to hurt myself. I have to keep my eye on my bigger running goals right now. I’m quite bummed that I’m doing this, but I think it’s the right thing to do.

I rarely run on the rain. In fact, I have often rearranged weekly runs to avoid running in the rain. If it rains on Saturday, I run on Sunday. If rains on a Wednesday, I certainly wait until Thursday. But not tonight … not my new Wednesday routine of long runs. And it’s only about 40 degrees. And I wore shorts.

As I sit here in a warm living room in dry clothes I’m thinking about what I just did. I was running with a friend, so that certainly helped, but at times it felt kind of stupid to be out there. With each puddle I stepped in, I kept thinking about how I was glad I didn’t have new shoes yet. Every time we came to a hill I thought about how comfortable being in the bed would feel. But at the end of each hill, I felt twice as strong as I did a few minutes before.

Runs like this are character building runs. It wasn’t all that fast, but it wasn’t slow either. Somehow, though, this run has made me a better person and a better runner. I just feel it, less than an hour after finishing. And, by the way, tonight’s run was 8 miles.

***

And, as a side note, I did 85 total push-ups tonight. Week 3, day 1, level 3 is in the books. I did a disappointing 35 push-ups on Monday with my exhaustion test. I say “disappointing,” but it’s still good enough to stay in level 3. I was just hoping for more, but I didn’t give myself enough rest to do more. So I’ll take it.

Unless you check my “31 in 31″ page, you probably don’t know that I’m trying the 100 push-ups program again. I had a solid start to this back in October and November only to have various things get in the way. I have re-started a couple of times, but made the mistake of not starting from scratch. So with starting everything fresh in 2010, I wanted a fresh start to this program.

The advantage of doing it this way is I actually start on a tougher level than I did originally. So on Jan. 1 I did 30 push-ups to get things started and I’ve quietly worked my way through the first couple of weeks of the program. The results so far have been very pleasing. This week alone I did 248 push-ups, with each and every one of them feeling great. A few months ago I was caught up in my arms feeling bigger after two weeks. This time around it just feels like a natural part of my workout program. This time around I feel like there’s more purpose to the program.

Tomorrow I will perform an exhaustion test to determine which level to do for weeks 3 and 4. I’m fully confident I’ll remain in column 3, but historically these next two weeks seems to be the toughest. Many people I have communicated with seems to struggle in these two weeks and can’t get over the week 4 slump. There’s nothing wrong with repeating a week, but that seems to be the downfall for many people. I don’t want that to happen to me this time around.

So a nice little cold has kicked off my year, but that’s not stopping me from my goal this month — 31 exercises in 31 days. Since my clogged head didn’t want to run yesterday, I opted for 30 push-ups to kick off the year. Here’s to hoping this jump-starts the 100 push-up challenge again this month.

As for today and still feeling bad (plus I didn’t bring any running clothes with me to visit my brother-in-law in North Carolina), it may be a Nintendo Wii type of exercising day I have to let that count for at least one of my days, so why not get it out of the way now when I’m not feeling great? I hope by tomorrow afternoon I can get in my first run of 2010 — “official” training for the Shamrock Half can’t wait any longer, nor can the hard work to shed a few pounds.

Lastly, with my “31 in 31″ kickoff to 2010, I’m looking for some alternative, but easy exercises to do this month. This is meant to be a simple way to do something different every day in addition to my usual running. If you know of anything that might not be obvious, please let me know in the comments section!

Happy New Year everyone!

Since the year is almost over, I thought I’d give you a special treat – a look back at the top 5 most read posts of the year. This is all about you, my loyal readers. I can’t make this stuff up. Only WordPress can. And apparently, you like what other people have to say (see Nos. 2 and 3 below), but I don’t really mind.

#5 – I am a marathoner and On the way to 100 push-ups
Technically my post from 2007 after the Richmond Marathon is the No. 5 most-read post this year. It’s not surprising since this has a link in my “About me” section, and I’ve linked to it several other times in other posts. It’s just kind of funny to me that a two-year-old post gets enough page views to be in the top 5.

As for my top 5 new posts this year, a post about my 100 push-ups journey takes this spot. A journey I have yet to complete for various reasons. Bring on 2010.

#4 – Stung in the eye
I would expect nothing less for this post to be here because people like to read about gross things. Three months later, I still cringe when I think about how it felt for a bug to get stuck in my eye. Next summer I will certainly be running more in sunglasses or clear lenses at night.

#3 – Are we really born to run? She says YES!
This was my first guest post of the year from one of my favorite bloggers out there. Go check out that post if you haven’t and click on a link to Michelle’s blog to read about her journey to 1,000 miles this year. It’s enough to make that a private goal for me next year. (Wait … I guess that might not be private now.)

#2 – But I did it anyway
More proof that you like other people, this was also from a guest blogger. Not that I mind – the few guest bloggers I’ve had have been great, and this one is from an ultra-runner who also coaches endurance athletes. Check it out for some inspiration.

#1 – A death near the finish line
This post is far and away the No. 1 post for the year, but it’s not a cause for celebration. This was about my experience as I neared the finish line of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach on Labor Day weekend. If you go back and reread that post, you’ll see that something is being planned to honor the runner who died that weekend.

Thanks to everyone who has visited this blog this year. Although I hinted at some changes a couple of weeks ago, I will be keeping this URL and name of the blog. While I want to make some changes in 2010, moving this blog isn’t something I need to do right now.