Good Week

Wow, it was a good week this week. I got in my three training runs and two cross training swimming times. Here's my run from this morning:



It was a really fine run. I can feel my runs getting easier, and today I passed a milestone. 6 mile in less than one hour. What was nice, was that I didn't feel like I was really pushing myself too much. I recovered easily and my muscles aren't sore. I was supposed to run it at a 10:26 pace according to my schedule, but I was just feeling good. I may need to go back in a couple week if this continues and adjust my training schedule to reflect the faster times.

Yesterday was another good day for swimming. As I mentioned earlier, I started doing the somersault turns last time. This time, it felt like I was starting all over as a swimmer. Now I don't consider myself an experienced swimmer, but I could at least go out and swim 1200m or more sometimes without stopping for a rest. What I found out is that it's a lot easer to get in a quick little rest when you do the above water turns or whatever you call them. So I found myself trying to put 100m runs in. After about 6 of those, I went to 200, then I tried a 400m, then another. It felt great. I think I just had to find that sweet spot where I wasn't pushing myself past the point of optimal oxygen consumption. That sweet spot, as I'm calling it, is a good thing to find for any endurance endeavor you're in. Once you find it, you can lengthen your time doing a motion and gradually work on increasing the intensity.

Big thanks to everyone who has posted a comment about this blog. You don't know how much it helps to know that there actually are a few people out there following this. It really keeps me accountable to do my runs and make good choices with the food I'm eating.

Progress update:

Weight: 223 (21 pounds lost)
Total distance: 117 miles (one 6 mi. run under 10:00/mile pace

I think I'm probably getting to the point that I'm not going to see much dramatic movement in weight loss. So I'm going to step away from the scale for a while. I won't weigh for at least two weeks, but hopefully longer. I'm at a healthy pace the last few weeks, about 2 pounds a week. That'll probably slow down to about 1 in the weeks to come.

Well, all for now. Thanks for reading!