Sunday, July 8, 2012

Full Speed Ahead…or Maybe Not

Front Tire

Saturday Outfit_The Bottom Half

June 2012 Star Chart Completed

A few quick notes on my star chart above: here you can see the evidence that I struggle to run three days a week.  Doh!  And the week of June 24 is mostly goose eggs because I was on vacation and the exercise I did get was walking, which is not a category on my chart.  

Week of July 1, 2012:

Thursday: Short run after work (25 minutes easy)

Friday: Yoga (Morning Flow #1—whoa, this was a good session)

Saturday: Biking for groceries

Week of July 8, 2012:

Sunday: Bike commute + grocery shopping (again!  I know…)

I’ve been back from my epic ten-day vacation for a week now, and I think that maybe, just maybe, I’m finally back in the game.  Last week, I had a really hard time putting myself back to work—between the exhaustion of traveling for ten hours, the luxury of not thinking about work for ten days, and the 4th of July holiday (which I chose to spend at home, thinking I wanted the time to relax and refocus), last week felt hard but lacking in productivity.  I know why it feels like I didn’t get anything done—it’s because science work is largely a result of momentum.  You put in the effort to get something going, the project starts picking up speed, and then results start rolling into Excel.  Because of my break, my current experiments are at Stage 1: put in the effort to get something going.

I’m trying to be patient with myself, but I also know I’ve got to find my focus.  With that in mind, I went into the lab today, a Sunday, to test some animals for behavior and collect flies for a Wednesday assay.  I didn’t get a lot of animals tested, nor did I collect a lot for behavior later this week, but I got a few in each category.  More importantly, I feel ready to hit the ground running tomorrow morning, and that is a good feeling.

I did not run this weekend for two reasons.  1)  My back was quite stiff and sore on Saturday morning, probably from Friday night’s yoga.  2)  I biked to the lab on Sunday and ran some errands, so I’m going to save this week’s miles for later this week.  Which brings me to my next topic: weekly mileage.  My plan is to follow the 10% rule about not increasing your running more than 10% each week.  Last week I ran 65 minutes, so this week I’m aiming to run 72 minutes.  Those minutes will be broken down into a 40-minute “long” run and either a 32-minute run or two shorter runs.  My friend Tom (Trainer Tom, he of the free training advice a few weeks ago) is talking about going to the track for some speedwork, so maybe I’ll do that with him.  But I want to be really careful not to overtrain right now—I’m feeling good about this summer’s running, but I’m afraid I may be overestimating my own fitness.  I’m going to be cautious about my running minutes and do plenty of cross-training in the form of biking and yoga.

Have a great week, everyone!

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