This weekend is the Bridge City Boogie, and I'm entered in the 5 km race of the event. I'm still at that stage where I'm focusing on trying to burn off more fat rather than building up my speed. When comparing my weight stats from June of last year, I'm seven pounds heavier now than I was back then. However, through the course of training this year I'm reaching and surpassing distances now that I wasn't able to achieve until late July/early August of last year.
This race coming up this Sunday is only five kilometers; what makes a shorter race so challenging is that they are faster paced, and I don't think I have come close to a level of amping up my speed yet. The other thing that is a trial for me now is setting a proper interval for tapering off activity before a race day. I (stupidly) did some new form of interval training, mostly uphill, mostly against the wind on a day when it was the windiest day I ever tried running through. My legs were totally butchered after more than eight kilometers of acceleration trials and fartleks*. I squeaked in 16 kms today, but I don't think it was a bright thing to do after yesterday. For tapering down, I'll just be doing some light cycling, some upper body weights for cross training, and relaxing as much as possible before Boogie day.
The other big issue is (has been) getting enough refreshing sleep due to the rising heat during the season. Overworked muscles don't heal and build up without adequate sleep. Sometimes I really wish I didn't have such a thermogenic metabolism.** When seasons change, I can easily make the physiological adjustment from warm to cold quite well; it takes me forever though to get acclimated when it starts getting hotter. I remember a few years ago when I lived in the topics once for a six month stint. I pretty much never slept during the first two months I spent there. I just seem to be pre-conditioned to need to live in a cooler climate; it seems to be in my blood.
The only other thing to add is my disappointment with the Nike plus website. I don't know what kind of monkeys they have been training for "enhancing" their site, but ever since they switched the format of the site over I've had nothing but trouble with my profile information and it's fraught with other errors and bugs that could misreport/misrepresent my running data.*** The coaching schedule I was using is totally gone, and there is nothing there as a replacement application for it. It matters because the next gift for myself (for running the Bridge City Boogie) would have been a heart monitor that is compatible with Nike + apps, but I won't be getting it now if all I can expect is malfunctioning due to this programming ineptitude.
What I'm sure I'll enjoy most about Boogie Sunday is seeing some of my co-workers, and people I serve, getting involved as well.
*- Fartlek - it's a word of Swedish origin, adopted into runners'-speak, describing a training technique which roughly translates to "speed play"; not anything to do with running related gastro-intestinal methane expulsion.
**- I can comfortably run shirtless with temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius, that's how warm my body gets while I exercise or exert myself. I wish I could somehow convert all the extra heat my body makes into propulsion, or something else more practical or creative.
***-Enhancement would imply that it works better; it doesn't, in fact it functions worse. It almost looks like they probably used the same sweatshop labour they had to make their shoes programming their website.
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