Posts Tagged: push-ups
3 goals set, 3 goals met.
In June and July I fell so short of so many goals that I was setting for myself that I knew things had to change in August. I didn’t document things this month as much as I thought I would, but that doesn’t mean things weren’t going well.
In fact, I’m ending August very happy. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a disaster. I set my mind to 3 goals and I hit every single one. I immediately want to talk about how I could have done even more, but I think that’s just a natural thing when actually hitting every goal. Here’s a look at how they all played out.
1,000 push-ups
Enlisting the help of friends on Facebook and a shared document was key to keeping me focused on this. There were times in the month that I thought my arms were going to fall off, but now that it’s done, I’m ready to do it again in September with more variety. I feel stronger and I can see the difference in the mirror.
All told I did 1,039 push-ups, hitting 1,000 with a couple of days to spare. The 10 of us who did the challenge did more than 10,500 total push-ups, with a few people needing to log the final few days. The women pretty much kicked everyone’s asses, but that’s one of the many fun aspects of this.
10 mile map
10 miles for a long run
It’s weird to have such low running miles for a month (61), but have my long run re-established at 10 miles (officially 10.1).
I normally wouldn’t recommend this approach, but having so many miles on my feet from the past few years and being injury free for a while now, it was worth the risk to increase my long run to double digits.
I knocked that out on Aug. 24, so that feels like a nice bonus to not have waited until the last possible day. Plus the weather was amazing that day for August.
Bike more than I run
I did 10 miles this morning to get to 67 for the month, beating out running by 6 miles. By running less in the past two months, I really got an urge to start running more in the second half of this month, and I debated on whether to drop this goal. After thinking about it the past couple of days I opted to forgo a long run today and close it out on the bike to mark all of these goals as DONE.
On to September
I have a few goals in mind for next month, but with a new baby coming SOMETIME during the month, I’m not quite sure yet how much I want to push myself. I had such a good time hitting August’s goals, that September may carry a similar theme.
Pushing it.
Push-ups. I love them. I hate them. I kinda sorta like them.
This month I’ve enlisted the help of my friends on this goal of 1,000 push-ups for the month. It’s turned into friendly competition for some, motivation for others and, of course, people who said they’d join but never did. It’s the first two groups that I’m most impressed with, and it’s those friends who have kept me going these first couple of weeks of the month.
In all my other failures to do a push-ups program, this time is truly different having longtime friends join in. Getting to a specific number of max push-ups isn’t the goal; simply gaining consistency, getting stronger and having fun as part of the process is what matters.
By the end of the month we’ll all be in a better spot that we were on Aug. 1. Then on Sept. 1, we’ll have to do something different to keep motivating each other. For now, though, the focus is on the second half of the month.
I’ve done 426 push-ups through tonight. As I write this 10 of us have done 4,450 push-ups. That’s quite a few stronger arms and cores out there for just a few minutes of work every day.
As for my other goals, I’m very much on track with more biking miles than running miles (28.6 vs. 21.6), and I’m pretty confident about getting to 10 miles for a long run this month despite having relatively low mileage so far. Over the weekend my mountain adventure led to some great time on my feet even though my mileage was less than the week before.
Speaking of the mountain adventure, here’s a look at that elevation change:
August = Accountability
July is quickly just a memory. Time to move on. Time for new goals.
Time for goals that almost don’t make sense at the first of the month.
I’m going to put them out there without explaining right now. Throughout the month I’ll touch base on each of these goals, as well as giving a progress report.
That’s my way of holding myself accountable, and it’s a major change for me considering how these past couple of months have gone.
WIthout any delay, here they are:
- 1,000 total push-ups
- More biking miles than running miles
- Increase long run to 10 miles
What’s in store for you this month?
A head-clearing race
In the past couple of months I have had so many moments in which I could not wrap my head around anything that was going on. Then, around mile 10 on Sunday, everything suddenly seemed so clear.
In my race recap this week I talked about how in the last 5k of Shamrock I seemed stuck in one gear. I realize now that this whole “one gear” thing comes from something that’s been going on for a while both mentally and physically that I am now working to change or improve.
Dual training is not for me
Signing up for a marathon when I was so intent on a goal in a half marathon was a huge mistake. In a few of my long runs, I’ve asked myself which race that run was for.
In a way I’m glad that I pushed myself beyond the half marathon distance a few weeks ago – it made me not think so much about the distance I was covering Sunday.
In many ways, though, I have struggled with the marathon training aspect because I really needed more miles both in long runs and overall mileage. Two weeks ago, for example, I probably should have been running 16 miles for my weekly long run; this week should have been about 18.
A PR in Shamrock always trumped marathon goals though. I have no regrets with that at all.
I think I made this decision while I was running Sunday, but this week I officially changed my marathon entry for Cleveland to the half marathon. Much more on that in a future post.
Want to talk speed? How about these Shamrock 8k leaders ...
Need for speed
I know I haven’t talked about individual workouts too much here, but a quick look at my dailymile workouts are revealing – while I’m a good 20 seconds faster per mile on regular runs than a year ago, I have once again fallen into a trap of one speed all the time.
I have to push myself more. For the first time in nearly 5 years, I will be hitting the track soon. I’ve used the inconvenient 10-minute drive to my local high school as an excuse for too long.
There are 8 weeks until Cleveland, which is plenty of time to get a few quality track workouts in. If I’m going to run sub 1:40 in a half marathon soon, I need to know what that speed really feels like.
Continue the core
There’s no question that push-ups and other core work have helped me tremendously in recent months. This will continue.
Where’s the bike?
I will dust off my bike. Remember this post about getting a bike helmet? Yeah, I still haven’t hit the road with my bike yet.
Get in my belly
I need to continue to eat better. I’ve set the wheels in motion this year with eating better and getting back to better portion control.
I still need some work with that, and over the next several weeks I want to lose a few more pounds and get to Cleveland feeling even better than I do now.
For help, I have downloaded the myfitnesspal app for my iPhone. I need to see where I am screwing up in the eating department and will use this as a tool to continue to improve.
Advice No. 1: Have fun
“Have fun” is my go-to final words for other runners. While I thoroughly enjoyed Shamrock and all its surrounding festivities, somewhere along the way I started taking the race too seriously.
While I have laid out some things in this post that will make me focus even more, I am doing a couple of races soon in which I’m not pressuring myself to PR. In fact, I couldn’t PR in them if I tried.
I’ll talk about that more in a later post, but I need these events to get back to the true fun part of doing a race. I did that several months ago with my series of 5ks, but I have drifted a bit from my main reason of running.
* * *
It’s funny how my best race of my life has made me feel this week. I have this feeling of having some potential for some great things yet to come, and for the first time in a while I know what I really need to do. …
20, 80, and a whole lot more
Today’s 4.5-mile run may very well be the most important run I’ve had in 6 months. Not only did it get me to 20 miles for the week and past 80 miles for the month of April, it caps what is the wildest 6 months of running I’ve ever had.
It’s almost hard to believe that at the start of this cycle, I was injured and now I’m talking about running 20 miles in a week again. I’ve gone from running the Richmond Marathon with a bum leg, to running just a couple of miles a week for a while, to slowly building my mileage back, to getting a PR in a 10k, to this.
This is about so much more than the mileage. It’s about getting my confidence back; it’s about feeling the best I have felt in a year; it’s about getting back to having fun with running again.
Having all this come together in April is very important to me too. After completely awful Aprils in 2008 and 2009 in which I ran just a little more than 30 miles each, I’ve now had two awesome Aprils. Last year I did my 30-day streak, had two great races and logged 100 miles.
In addition to running, I have continued to do many “other” things such as a variety of push-ups, sit-ups and squats. I fell short my 50 consecutive push-ups goal, but I still did more than 500 push-ups this month. I have to go back to the drawing board on that. I maxed out at 35, but even with rest when my arms felt tired I couldn’t get beyond that. I need a better plan.
All in all, I am happy with where things are 1/3 of the way through the year. I’m in a good place with my running to keep gradually increasing my overall mileage and continue building a base before I flip the mental switch to “officially” training for the Baltimore Marathon.
No. 664
Just a few random thoughts for a Friday …
- Today marks one year since the launching of this site. In 12 days, I’ll celebrate 4 years of blogging. This all got started under a different name, then I changed the name to “Running Because I Can” a few months later on Blogger, then moved to WordPress and now this (which uses a WordPress admin). (Today is the 664th post in those four years.) It’s been a great year, but I don’t see a need to rehash anything today. I’ve done enough of that.
- I had a horrible run Wednesday night. It felt like I was running through mud. I need runs like that from time to time to remind me that the comeback trail isn’t easy. Sometimes I think it appears that it’s easy, but it’s certainly not. The run was so craptastic that I decided right then and there to take a couple of days off and wait to smack the weekend around a bit.
- I did a max of 33 push-ups Tuesday, five more than my initial test last week. I’m feeling confident that I’ll get to 50 in a few weeks and I can already tell that it’s going to be just as much of a mental challenge as it is a physical challenge.
- I read an interesting post this week from Fitz over at Strength Running, who detailed lessons learned from his race this past weekend. Check it out here. You may learn a thing or two from his experience.
- #runchat with me and Scott returns this Saturday with Brooks as a sponsor and a cool giveaway. Check out Scott’s entry here for all the details. See you on Twitter at 8 p.m. ET for a great night of chatting about running.
- If you missed last night’s post about my Relay for Life efforts, please read it now! I have a huge goal I’d like to hit today.
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