Friday, July 04, 2008

Another race, another new challenge

Tomorrow I will be doing yet another race (50K) and this one promises to be pretty tough. It's called the Creemore Vertical Challenge and it will consist of doing 60% hill climbs. It will definitely put my quadricep muscles to the test.

I haven't really looked back to see what I have accomplished over these past 3 months but doing 6 Ultra races of between 30 Miles to 68 Miles, is something that I can truly be proud of. I knew that this year would be tough on me physically but so far I've been able to remain injury free and have maintained my running base mileage. I've also been doing a minimum of one and sometimes two days of weight lifting and I think that has helped strengthen my core muscles.

It will be a long day tomorrow as I'll leave my house at 4:00 AM and probably won't return until sometime in the evening on Saturday. It will be nice to see so many of my friends tomorrow at the race.

As is customary, I took yesterday off from running and did my 2nd day of weight lifting this week. I decided not to do any lower body lifting because of my race on Saturday. I've recently started to do some Tae Bo type training at the end of my weight training workout. I start off by using 5 pound weights in my hand as I simulate some boxing movements. Towards the end of the workout I drop the weights and just punch with my hands. This has increased my speed and overall muscle endurance.

Although my first love will always be running, it's nice to throw in some different workouts to keep the body from getting too accustomed to the training. My body is so used to running 10 or more miles daily that if I don't do at least that much it's almost like my mind and body feels letdown.

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