Week 3 of CLE

I'm a week closer to marathon number three. I try to stay away from cliche phrases like that, since we are always getting closer to an event in the future rather than implying that it's possible to be further. Anywho, here is the week in running by numbers:

5 runs
27.87 miles
4:02:11 (h:m:s)
6.9 miles per hour (average)
2,637 calories burned

I fell thirteen-hundredths of a mile short of my plan (28). I blame it on the weather--not the cold, but the crappy rain-sleet-opening-of-the-angry-heavens on Wednesday night. I had a long day. Rob agreed to join me to run at 7:30PM when I was finally free for the evening and since didn't have a single chance to even think about checking the weather, I planned for us to run 6 miles. It was 46° but windy when we got started, so I threw on a vest over my short-sleeved shirt. As soon as we hit the pavement, the wind kicked up with easily 20 mile per hour gusts. A few minutes later, the sky pelted us with tiny, cold rain drops. Those rain drops quickly became semi-frozen. We wussed out just over 3 miles, but I was so very happy to be done. I tried to compensate for the short mileage through Sunday and fell just short.

Oh, and I completed Plyometrics!

As the photo demonstrates, I wasn't sure of myself upon the warm-up. I had watched Joe do it the night before (while I was curled in the fetal position on the couch) and was impressed by his soft landings and the sweat pouring from his head. I didn't think I'd make it through without quitting or throwing a hissy fit.

I did the entire 60ish minutes of jumping, squatting, lunging, and combining all three into moves only Tony Horton could conjure. I did need a short break on two moves. The first was Run Squat 180-Jumps, which is in the final sequence of moves. I skipped 2 of the jumps because I could feel my form falling apart and I didn't want to "dog it," as Tony describes sloppy execution of his moves. The other sequence that I cut short was in the bonus round (yes, I'm a baller and made it to the bonus round)--Pitch and Catch. I never have been a baseball or softball player, so that move was not in my repertoire of things that I can do without looking like a newborn giraffe falling out of the birth canal and then flailing its giant, awkward legs in an attempt to mobilize itself. I wasn't tired or dogging it, but completely incapable of watching the move and executing it simultaneously. When I thought I finally got the right-handed move right, it was time to switch to left-handed. Yeah, that was probably comical.

With that, week four has begun. Although I'm supposed to do Core Synergistics tonight, Joe and I instead plan to do Plyo together. I've added another race to my plan, which is the Toledo Road Runners 25K on February 17th. It was one of my training races for Glass City last year. I killed it in the first five miles at 8-minute pace, then I kinda fell apart. I finished just over 15 miles in 2:10. I was still new to running at the time, so I'm thinking that this time around I should be able to pace myself better and maybe even PR the course.

LAST but not and least important: I received my free Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon early-bird sign-up gift. I predicted when I registered for CLE that the gift would be something best stored in a trash can.

I was right.