Marathon Pre-Training, Week 3

This week's stats:

• 3.81 treadmill miles
• 0 outdoor miles
• 1.5 hours on the elliptical machine
• 3 weightlifting sessions
• 2 pounds lost

Total pre-training stats:

• 3 weeks
• 19.41 treadmill miles
• 5.71 outdoor miles
• 5 pounds lost

We didn't spend as much time at the gym this week because I spent two 9+ hour days at work completely rearranging the sales floor at 5 different stores.  That was unexpected.  I was only scheduled to help with the reset of my store on Wednesday, but somebody on another reset team called out on Tuesday and I got a 6am phone call from my boss asking me to get ready as quickly as possible and fill in.  So not only was Tuesday really strenuous and longer than usual (we finished the two stores for that day faster than expected, so we went ahead and got my store mostly finished by the end of the day so the team was a whole day ahead of schedule), but my sleep was cut short.  Plus, I was running around so much I kind of lost track of time and forgot to eat until way past noon.  By the time I went home I'd barely eaten half my day's calories, had a throbbing caffeine withdrawal headache, and was physically too overworked to safely make it through my workout.  Plus, my knees hurt from kneeling on the floor so much.  (That's what she said.)  I only anticipated having to finish up at my store on Wednesday, but since we were working so efficiently the team leader called the two stores that were scheduled to be reset on Thursday and told them we'd go ahead and get them done a day early.  So that was another unexpected day of long and strenuous work.  Good experience, but I was pretty wiped out.  We went ahead and caught a short nap Wednesday evening and then did a full workout because I didn't want to skip any more than necessary. I especially didn't want to skip out on strength workouts because we had a training session Friday morning, so I ended up cutting cardio time instead.

So after a weird week, my pre-training routine called for just an easy one-hour walk on Saturday.  I don't consider an hour a "long" anything.  We rarely if ever spend less than an hour on cardio anyway.  So instead of doing a slower paced long walk I decided to do a time trial and see how far I could go in an hour at maximum effort.  Unfortunately, the weather's been a bit too cold for my liking lately, so I did it on the treadmill.  I started off at 3.5mph, which is what I averaged the last time I was training consistently, and assessed after every quarter mile whether I felt like I could go faster.  I maxed at 4.2mph and averaged just barely under 4.  I'm feeling really good about my progress.  It's already exponentially easier for me to maintain 4mph than it was just a month ago.  Until my actual training schedule kicks in I think I'll turn all my one hour Saturday walks (every third week) into time trials and adjust my intervals and tempo walks accordingly to see just how far I can push my speed before May. The main reason I wanted to test my speed was to get a better idea of how fast I should be doing tempo walks, intervals, etc.  I like having some kind of guideline to go by beyond perceived exertion.  I don't have a long history of exerting myself, so I have a feeling my perception is not exactly reliable just yet.  Our trainer has been proving again and again we're capable of far more exertion than we think we are, so...

I'm starting to flirt with the idea of running.  Well, jogging.  I'm certainly not going to try and run the full marathon, but it certainly wouldn't hurt my efforts to plan to run a bit of each mile, even if it's a small bit.  At this point I'm just going to leave the possibility open and see if I am even able to walk at close to 5mph without naturally transitioning to a jog or run.  My sister/marathon partner has done her share of running and, at the insistence of her 50-year-old joints, has retired to walking now, but she can easily walk at 5mph or faster.  Part of me wants to avoid running because she's already said she's going to do the marathon at my pace and she doesn't want to run, but I have a feeling my walk/run pace won't be any faster than her best walking pace, so whatever.  No sense holding back because I'm worried she won't want to keep up.  It's a fucking marathon!

On the weight loss front, I think I've spotted a pattern.  It seems I don't lose weight in the week immediately following a session with our trainer.  And that makes sense, since he always kicks our workout up a couple notches each time so we're building more muscle after the first couple of goes at the new routine than we do after we've gotten used to doing it.  My boss (who used to be a competitive bodybuilder) says that's normal and should level out after a while.  I know I'm losing fat -- it's visibly obvious.  I'm getting smaller, my clothes fit better, and I'm getting muscle definition where there didn't used to be any.  Now I'm just dying for Andrew to weigh and measure us -- I want to see how much my body fat percentage and measurements have changed.