I’ve decided that this year I’m gone to try streaking. I’ve seen articles about it in magazines and I’ve heard others talking about how they can’t imagine not streaking once they started. What finally convinced me to give it a try is when my therapist, Yvonne, talked about it.
Wait…I’m talking about running or some type of aerobic activity every day. What were you thinking about?
Anyway, I’m talking about going out and doing some type of activity for at least 10 minutes every day. For me sometimes that is running, sometimes it’s walking, and this time of year a lot of the time it’s soccer. The point is that everyday I go out and do something. Now I know that this doesn’t seem like a whole lot since I go on a lot of runs, but I usually don’t do something athletic every day. So far, I’ve had a streak going since 12/31/2019… 28 days. Runner’s World encourages people every summer to streak for a month or two with the hope being that once you set the habit up it will continue past the challenge.
There are sites set up to help encourage run streaking like Run Bet. Similar to diet bet where you put a little money down on losing a certain amount of weight by percentage in a given amount of time. RunBet has you put some money down and you follow a prescribed by the challenge distance for a set amount of time. For instance, I signed up for one that starts mid-February and lasts 4 weeks. During that time, I have 5 runs of a varying distance that I have to do every week. The main caveat is that you can only log one run a day. At the end of the challenge all the money is divided up by the number of people who completed the challenge. Not something that you will make a bunch off of but it’s a fun little way to help motivate yourself to get out consistently.
Along with starting a streak the local running store Tortoise and Hare Sports began the annual Frozen Feet challenge in association with Brooks. Which is a challenge to walk or run at least mile every day for 6 weeks. It needs to be a purposeful mile. Meaning that you can’t count just the general walking around that you do during the day, you need to go out with the intentional of completing a mile. Throughout the event they are holding some events such as a marshmallow mile. Think of a beer mile and just substitute the beer for marshmallows.
In line with the re-aligned 2020 goal of a 5K under 18 minutes. I’ve done 2 things. The first being I’ve started working with a nutrition coach. Jet, yes the same one who coaches me lifting, at Kilo Barbell Club is a certified nutrition coach through PN coaching. After talking with me about where I am and the ultimate goal of running significantly faster we decided that the main goal of the nutrition coaching should be to lose weight. The main thought being that I’m carrying too much extra weight that isn’t geared toward helping me run. Admittedly, I have gained a fair amount in the past year. When I started working with her on nutrition I was up to 200 lbs I’m now at 188. I’m not only changing what I eat but how I eat.
Second, I’ve broken the main goal down into sub goals. There is a basic tenant in engineering. If you have a problem that appears to be impossible to solve, break it down into smaller pieces until you have a problem you can solve. Solve that, then go on to the next, and then the next, and so on until the problem that was too big is solved. Another way to put it is the old line of: How do you eat an elephant? Which of course is properly answered as: One bite at a time.
So, I’m going to break the end goal into milestone and inch-stones. We use this system in my day job and I don’t know why it’s just occurring to me that I should apply this principle to my running. For the uninitiated milestones are the major accomplishments or tasks that need to be completed on the way to a goal or as I call it at work a deliverable. Inch-stones are a further breakdown of the milestone into even smaller accomplishments on the way to a milestone. We also use what I call mile markers, these are set point on a calendar used to measure where we are on our way to the milestones and to make any adjusts necessary in the inch-stones.
Ok, sorry, I became an engineer there for a second, hopefully I didn’t lose anyone. The way I see my running goals are as follows. The end goal is to qualify for Boston by 45. So that will be the “deliverable”. I believe that to achieve that goal I have the following milestone that I have to hit. I need a 5K under 18 by the end of 2020, a 10K under 40 by the end of 2021, a Half Marathon under 1:30 by the end of 2022, and then 2 years to increase that to the Full marathon under 3 hours.
So, for now let’s just look at the 5K milestone. My current 5K time is 29:57 set on Jan 11 this year. That will be the start point. My inch-stones then will be, April sub 24 minutes, June sub 22, August sub 20, October sub 19, December sub 18 with Mile Markers in March, July, September, and November.
Up
tomorrow is the Mesa 10K. I know, I just spent all this time talking about 5Ks and I’m running a 10K. Originally this was going to be the 10K year that is until the injuries and mono. I signed up for this a year ago with a discount code. Here is my plan. I’m going to take the first mile easy. And by easy, I mean nearly walk. Then I’m going to run miles 2, 3, and 4 as if it was a 5k. Then just jog or maybe do intervals for the last couple of miles. (note: this was meant to be posted on Friday. I did well on the 10K but more on that later) Until then…C_YA!
Running with Neal 