Week 10 - A Light Week

Every year on April 9, the captured soldiers are honoured on Araw ng Kagitingan ("Day of Valour"), also known as the "Bataan Day", which is a national holiday in the Philippines. During the 1980-1990's, the Boy Scouts of America [Philippine troop] would reenact this march every 2 years along a portion of the initial route in Bataan taken by the soldiers. The march was about 10 kilometers in length.  -  Wikipedia

Every once in a while I stop and think about the training we’re doing, and why we’re doing it.  We all have our reasons, but one I think we share is the concept of being a part of something that’s bigger than ourselves, and joining those in the past who have honored the Bataan Survivors, and our heroes in general.  Doing something like this, at least once in your life, helps put and keep things in perspective.

You’ll notice from the stats for the week below, that my current weight is on an undeniable decline (from peak weight so far), despite the couple of months of time in the gym.  Not a bad thing at all, just surprising to me.  I’m figuring at this point that much of the weight I’ve carried around since leaving the Marine Corps was “hidden”, i.e. other than the spare tire I added to over the years, which is pretty much non-existent these days.  There’s no doubt that my body shape has changed, so it’s not that I’m not getting good results from the work-outs…it seems more that I wasn’t quite where I thought I was going into this.  I knew I wasn’t in great shape, but I was certainly feeling better about my activity levels for the year long lead up to this heightened workout regime, and I suppose I figured that I was “just about there” going into this.  I now figure that I was dead wrong on that score, and am now looking forward to seeing how the rest of this works out and am going to do so without pre-conceptions of just what that will be.

Week 10:  current weight 162, +2 lbs. from Week 1

Monday:  Off

Tuesday:  Run to work w/ light pack

Wednesday:  Chest and shoulder weights

Thursday:  Run home from work w/ light pack

Friday:  Off

Saturday:  Off

Sunday:  Off

I had big plans for Thursday/Friday.  I intended to run home on Thursday and turn around and run right back in on Friday morning.  That didn’t work out well though, as when I got up on Friday morning I had pretty significant pain in the lower legs, left knee, and right ankle.  So I scrapped the Friday morning run and hitched a ride with my wife back to work (and my car).  I didn’t feel that the risk of an injury was worth pushing it at that point.

 That’s okay though, as I’d been tossing around the idea for a while of toning it down for a week to let my body catch up some.  My theory is that the past couple of months have piled up a series of minor “accumulated” injuries, and that it’s likely that I’m not giving myself enough time to recover from them.  I have certainly done my part in propping up the stock value of various over-the-counter pharmaceutical companies recently.

That said, I’ll get back to it and hit it hard next week, with hopefully two back to back runs.  As of now I’m planning on Monday evening/Tuesday morning, and Thursday evening/Friday morning runs.  That’ll be about 24 miles for the week, which I’m looking forward to being able to say that I’ve done.

I’m getting happier with upper body strength as I feel I’ve caught up to what is needed for the hikes that we are currently doing.  Obviously I’ll need to continue to build that as our hikes get longer, but I no longer feel that I’m behind in that department, so there will be less emphasis on the heavy weight lifting time, and more emphasis on the feet toughening and endurance building (back to back runs, etc).

We’re getting into the season when I enjoy being on the mountain bike far less (back to me being a wuss and not liking being cold).  My tentative plan right now is to replace (or nearly so) the mountain bike riding to work with hikes to work with additional weight.  I’m thinking right now that bumping the pack up to 55 lbs. may make up for the fact that the hikes to/from work with the “regular” weight heavy pack weren’t feeling like a real workout.  Plus, the heavier weight should help with the foot toughening and maintaining the increased upper body strength…that 55 lbs. will sit somewhere, much of it on the shoulders.  My only serious hesitation with this idea is the time commitment.  It takes much longer to walk to work than it does on the bike, and with playing Taxi Dad, afternoon responsibilities with the girls and lots of stuff like that, I may be hard pressed to get more than one of these hikes in per week.  We’ll just have to see how that works out.

We didn’t do a hike this weekend, and I missed it.  Instead, Ingrid and I headed down to Baltimore for my 20^th High School reunion, which was fun.  Overall though, I think it was good to have a complete weekend off, and a light week to boot.  Going into week 11, I’m feeling well rested, all healed up, and enthusiastic about hitting it hard this coming week.  Our end of week hike goal is 17 miles.  That number is sounding more and more intimidating each week.  But, you know, we did 16 last week, and 16 the week before…adding one mile to that can’t hurt that much, can it?