Personal Recap: Mar 2010
Fitness
So most of March on a personal level was directed toward my running pursuits. As I prefaced last month, inspired by that darn book I’m in the process of transforming from a short distance runner to a long distance runner. My goals are to run a 15 mile race/run by the end of this year, and a 30 mile race/run by the end of 2011.
I’ve always been fairly focused on fitness and staying in shape, but this pursuit had me upping my weekly miles fairly significantly so I was anticipating facing some Beasts. Most notably I had figured I’d be facing off against fatigue and commitment. Also, at 50 years old (now 51), there was another Beast looming that I couldn’t control – age. While I don’t buy in to what I would call the excuse of age, and I think you can stay in great shape no matter how old you are, it’s hard to deny that changes are unavoidable as we get older. In particular to running longer and longer distances, I was concerned that maybe my knees and ankles would rebel.
So how’d it go?
Things went well in March and I’m happy to report that I averaged 25 miles/week during the month. It wasn’t always easy and based on the research I did throughout the month I raised my mileage way too much way too fast, but that’s kind of how I do everything.
I did bump up against fatigue here and there and feel really good that my commitment to my goal won out. Just in one month of running these longer distances I can tell you it is a completely different feeling versus short distances. I felt like I had a “buzz” just about the entire month and I was constantly hungry. Both have abated somewhat heading into April.
Physically, I haven’t lost much weight which was surprising. However, I can definitely tell my body has changed. I almost feel taller and I have leaned out considerably.
Sleep has been sometimes more elusive than I thought it would be. Running so many miles I thought would help with sound sleeping nights but it has really been the opposite. Leg muscles are often sore, especially after the long, Sunday run and Tylenol doesn’t seem to help much. Even when the legs aren’t particularly sore, it seems like it still takes a long time to fall asleep and many nights are very restless. I can’t tell yet if this is linked to excess energy from the high level of activity or simply “too much on the brain”. I will be keeping an eye on this one.
Two lessons learned
First – legs are like cell phone batteries. The first time you charge them and use them, they last forever. The more you use them, the less they seem to last. I was noticing this with my legs and toward the end of March, they were really starting to feel sluggish and sore. I ended up going for a massage, with a deep tissue focus on my legs. Rejuvenation! So now, a monthly deep tissue massage for the legs is on my agenda.
Second – like anything new, you don’t know what you don’t know. Based on the research I’ve done throughout March and now into April, the approach I’ve taken to upping my miles hasn’t been especially well planned. There are a ton of resources out on the web on how to train for marathons and longer, and some of the training regimens are not what you’d expect. I may write more on this in April, but for now I’m sticking with my current schedule. I did kind of bludgeon my body into this, and now that things have evened out a bit, I’m going to ride that current schedule for a while and let things catch up.
The month’s highlight
No doubt the month’s highlight was my visit to my sister and her family out in Arizona. Not only was it great to see my sis again, but Arizona was beautiful. They live really close to a couple of major parks and I ran a couple of the trails there. One in particular, a 7 mile trail up and around a small mountain, was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on a trail run. There were a couple places, up the side of the mountain, where the scenery was gorgeous. However, I decided not to look too much as many places the trail was about 2 feet wide, covered in loose gravel, and slanted away from the mountain toward the 700/800 foot dropoff. In fact, a couple times I stopped running and walked these short sections as they were so narrow.
This got me thinking about goals…
The importance of goals
When I started this whole distance running thing, I set myself some goals as I’ve shared with you. I also have daily goals – some days you run for tempo, others for distance. In running the Pass Mountain trail, it was definitely for distance: it was a new trail for me so I didn’t know what to expect. Plus, I was on vacation so it was for fun too. Normally though, I’m pretty competitive when it comes to running and training and especially on a fun trail (and I was having a great run), I tend to push myself fairly hard.
Well, it can be a wakeup call when you almost fall over the edge of a 800 foot dropoff into rocks and cactus. So when those few sections came up, I immediately slowed down and walked through them for better “navigational control”. I found it really didn’t bother me since I had a goal – and the goal for the day was Distance and Fun. I wasn’t worried about how long it took me to complete the run in, as long as I had fun and ran the distance.
Goals, especially long term goals, help provide a context in which to evaluate your actions and put them into perspective. Without my goals for that day, I may have beaten myself up over slowing down, perhaps putting myself at risk of significant bodily injury.
I know I’m not telling any of you anything you don’t know – but I think it’s a topic that’s worth revisiting once in a while. Do you have personal goals? Are your goals truly long term? How much of your life do you live without a goal (and how satisfying is that)?
I never used to be a goals person, and I’ll admit there is still part of me that thinks the whole thing can get really overblown by certain folks (especially those selling books and consulting). But I have found it is very important to have some strategic, long term goals. They provide context for your personal and professional life, they generate short term tactical goals to help guide your day, and the thought process leading up to crafting those long term goals can be invaluable for deciding what’s important to you in your life.
In closing
So March was a good month. I’m halfway into April and it’s going well too. I hope to have some interesting thoughts to share with you the end of this month as well. Not much else to talk about on my other personal passions as kickstarting this new goal consumed much of my time. I hope you all had a great March as well – what did you get accomplished? Leave me a comment and let me know what you’ve been up to. What’s your current personal goal(s) and what progress did you make last month?
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