3 Miles on Dreadmill

As Dexter Poindexter would say, today was "HOT, HOT, HOT!" Okay, I'm showing my age with the Dexter Poindexter reference, but it was hot in Warner Robins, GA. When I got into my car to leave the restaurant around 3:00, the exterior temp showed 106 degrees. A local nearby bank showed 107. Weather.com showed 100 with heat index of 105. It was way to hot to start my training outdoors on the pavement, even as the sun retreated in the afternoon.

That left the dreaded hotel treadmill. By hotel standards, the two available TM's were not horrible. I choose the better of the two. My plan was an easy 3 miles with a 1/4 mile warm up and cool down walk. As I started turning the speed up, the TM started screaming at me to slow down, or was that my body speaking to me? It has been about a month since I ran 3 miles, Peachtree 10K probably. I started out very slow, much slower than I have ever run, and gradually increased the speed throughout the run.

I was not going for records today. This is day 1 of 33 weeks. The goal is to start slow, build slow and stay injury free. While I start getting my endurance back, I also want to start on some strength and core. To that extent, I finally started Week 1, Day 1 (W1D1) of the 100 Push up Challenge. I know, I blogged about it some time back. It's time. In addition, it's also time to begin focusing on eating properly again. After the run, I headed off to Subway for a foot long Turkey Breast on wheat, baked chips, and good old H20. Most importantly, I PASSED on the cookies, my weakness when visiting Subway.

I'd like to drop 8 pounds minimum to get back below the Mendoza line (199) and would love to get down to 190 pounds, or 17 pounds. I know this would not only improve my overall health but also take some of the strain of running off my body. Research says that each pound dropped equals about a 2 second per mile improvement in running speed. Wouldn't that be nice!

It feels great to once again have some goal races and a training plan in place. Day one is in the books. Stay tuned...