Friday, June 30, 2006

Marathon Training Started Without Me

Oops.

When I registered for MCM, I dusted off my 16-week marathon training spreadsheet, entered the 10/29 race date, and back-filled the weekly dates to get to a training start date of 7/2. With that in mind, I always thought my training would start the first week of July. Except that I checked again today, and training should've started the week ending 7/2 ... i.e. this week.
Still, it's only the first week, and I was supposed to do 3/3/3 on Tue/Wed/Thu followed by 6 on Sat. Instead, I happened to do 4/0/4 on Tue/Wed/Thu and tomorrow I'm doing the Liberty 5K race here in Dallas.

So I might not get all the miles in this week, but I think I'll still walk away well trained. Why? Because of a heck of a workout yesterday and today trimming trees in my backyard. Every July 4th, the well-heeled members of the Gleneagles County Club here in Plano assemble at the club for an All-American Buffet followed by a spectacular private fireworks display. Non-members such as yours truly, assemble the family clan at our house for a big, boisterous dinner, followed by pool-side seats to view the same so-called "private" fireworks display directly across our back yard! We're barely a mile and a half from the club, so it's almost as good as being there!

I only managed to trim two of the four large trees I have in the back, but even that led to this mountain of a pile of brush for the recycling truck to pick up. It easily took over a hundred trips from the backyard to the back driveway, carrying or pulling branches, and stacking them on top of this pile. Some of the logs you see must have weighed a good 40-50 lbs each. It took 6 hours total to do this, 3 unplanned dips into the pool to cool off, 1 slightly twisted ankle (but not enough to keep me from my race tomorrow), and miraculously, 0 broken bones or chain-saw mishaps! I'm marking this down as "cross-training" on my marathon training spreadsheet!

6 comments:

Anne said...

I'd mark it down as cross training for several days. It's got to be the equivalent, as I'm sure your muscles are screaming today.

Unknown said...

I think you deserve a rest day after all that yardwork! Suburban cross training at its finest!

Black Knight said...

You have all my support but I prefer another kind of cross training!

Anonymous said...

if you were in singapore, thamby could have done that for you for fifty singapore bucks, and you could have been out running ... oh well ...

Deene said...

oops, but you've been getting plenty of crosstraining.

Rae said...

Man! Yard work is some serious cross training! I think the dips in the pool were well deserved!