Progressing Pack Runs - Continued Personal Training

We’ve been continuing with the workout plan with not much particularly exciting to share, hence the lack of a real update lately. We’re carryin’ on carryin’ on! Thursday night training with Morgan continues to be hard, but our recovery from it and our ability to actually do everything Morgan asks of us are getting better. That has allowed us to add the weight training back into our rotation, so the weekly schedule looks something like this:

    Monday – weights chest, shoulders, tri’s, abs
    Tuesday – weights back, light bi’s, abs
    Wednesday – legs, abs
    Thursday – Morgan night, consisting of overall body workouts with tendency to focus on two or so areas (shoulders, abs, glutes/legs, core, etc)
    Friday – bi’s/abs
    Saturday or Sunday – pack run

Morgan has changed our weights workouts a bit, at least for me. Corey has always gone with (relative) lighter weight than I have, but higher reps. In actuality, Corey’s a bit stronger than I am with a stockier build, so the weight he was using for his higher reps was actually the same weight I was using for the lower reps. Now, we both do full sets of 15 reps each with most of our lifts.

Several weeks back, Morgan did a body composition test on us with a cool toy he’s got that sends electrical signals through the body to determine bone density, muscle mass and body fat in each body part. I was pretty psyched to have the thing tell me that I have the body of a 25 year old. Overall the stats came out very good for us both. Our bone density is higher than normal, almost certainly from the pack work over the past 2 years. Our muscle mass is very evenly distributed (right/left), which is very good. Body fat is relatively low, well in the “healthy” category (not much of a surprise really).

My body weight is down a lot from last year…if you kept up with my postings from then you may remember that I started in what I considered at the time to be in “good shape”, weighing in at 170 lbs. I guess I didn’t realize at the time just how bad my shape was =) I weighed in this morning at 149 lbs., and I have FAR more muscle mass upper and lower body than I had then. I haven’t looked like I do now since early 1992 and I’m quite pleased. All in all, over the past two years I must have lost around 30 lbs. of fat…and that’s if I’ve only put on about 10 lbs. of muscle. Somehow that doesn’t seem right though, because I seem to have put on quite a bit more muscle mass than that, plus the bone density increase shown on Morgan’s test. To guess, it would seem more like I’ve put on 20 lbs. of muscle overall, but that would mean around 40 lbs. of fat loss, which doesn’t seem right either because I don’t think I was carrying THAT much extra weight.  At least now with Morgan's toy from here on out we'll know what's changed instead of having to guess.

In any event, I have been hovering right at around 150 lbs. for the past two months now and believe that that represents my “natural healthy” weight. We’ll see if it changes much/any in the next couple of months as I ramp up the distance in the pack runs.

The only other thing to really share from the past weeks is that I started to second guess myself on the FiveFingers, but I’m back on track with swearing by them. I got to thinking about the 20 mile hike that Corey and I did several months back, and how much foot pain I had on that hike in the Fingers. Then I got to thinking that I haven’t done a pack run anywhere near the 18 miles where my feet started hurting on that hike. That led me to reason that I should probably prepare myself for what would happen if my feet have the same problem in the FiveFingers for when I do get to that distance with the pack runs. I should be able to swap over to normal shoes if I get to that kind of pain level in the Fingers.

So Saturday a week ago, I donned the 40 lbs. pack and went out for a modest 8 mile run with my high-speed Brooks running shoes that I bought last year. I’m here to tell you that it was an extremely painful experience. My feet did fine…but by about mile 6 the shock on the legs was adding up to an excruciating experience. It started about mid calf and got worse higher up in the legs. The focus though was on the knees. I almost didn’t finish the run, and it took me a full three days before my knees felt normal again.

The following Wednesday, I did the exact same run with the Fingers as the only difference. As it turns out, my thinking back in the spring around the benefits of training my legs to the Fingers in order to reduce the shock on the legs was right on. I sailed past the six mile mark with no pain. At the seven I started considering extending the run. I did stop at eight, but only because I really wanted to be able to get a solid judgment on recovery time afterward from doing the exact same run in the Fingers. I definitely felt that I could have done far more, and was considering going for 12 miles.

Not only did I have no pain during the run itself, I woke up the next day with no soreness or stiffness. The legs did feel like I’d worked them just like normal…but nothing more. So, no more doubts on the Fingers other than that I’m still left with wondering if I’m going to have that long distance pain in the feet again at around the 18+ mile mark.

Not sure yet what I’m going to do there. I will probably bring the hiking shoes that I used on last year’s Bataan with me, just in case. That way, if I get to that level of pain I can swap out of the Fingers and walk the rest of the way if I have to.

So in summary, everything is very positive, and I’m still on track. I may not hit my 6 hour finish time goal this year but I’m still happy that I’ve decided to push for Bataan again in 2011 instead of waiting to be completely ready in 2012. It’s still a great experience and well worth doing, and provided I don’t have a medical disqualification for whatever reason during the event, I should crush last year’s time by a fair margin which will feel really good.