Random/"Rundom" Thoughts

-Yay! It’s Global Running Day! In case you did not know:

Global Running Day is a day that celebrates the sport of running. It is held annually on the first Wednesday of June. Participants of all ages and abilities pledge to take part in some type of running activity by submitting their names through the Global Running Day website. The inaugural Global Running Day was held on June 1, 2016. More than 2.5 million people from 177 countries pledged to run more than 9.2 million miles. New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared June 1, 2016, to be Global Running Day in the City of New York. 2014 Boston Marathon winner Meb Keflezighi led a group run from the Boston Run Base, and the Atlanta Track Club organized a “run around the clock” event, where at least one person from the Atlanta metro area would be running every hour of Global Running Day.

Source: Wikipedia

-Not only does Global Running Day fall on June 2 so does International Sex Workers' Day.

-While I did not log in any miles for Global Running Day, I did purchase a 3-race pack through Run Rock n Roll. So that counts, right?

-These races (probably half-marathons) are my top picks.

• Va Beach: I have not run a race in my home state or home city since my high school cross country days back in the late 90s

• Madrid: I was supposed to run this marathon last year. Wait, I gotta double check to see if my last year's registration will roll over to this year.

• San Antonio: I really like this city.

• New Orleans: I have not returned since graduating college back in '02.

-Eek! Only 156 days until TCS NYC Marathon; I need to get on my training grind.

-Some running positivity . . . I guess.

Social media plug:

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United NYC Half Marathon Training Week 6 (Jan. 28th)

Planned mileage: 21.5 (+40min tempo)

Completed mileage: 11 miles

Looks like I was pretty far away from my goal. 

From last week's update, I mentioned that I was having some back issues with a couple of my training run. Thus, I decided to dial it back a little bit lot to recover.

Ok, let's get into this thing. 

Oh, one more thing: there's like 1.5 months left until the UnitedNYCHalf. I really need to decide if I'm going to do this thing or not. Well, I guess it is up to my body. 

I made a couple of changes from my previous week:

1. Obviously, I did not run as much. 

2. I decided to skip some of my near-daily stretches, especially glute extensions. 

3. Since I have a full-time desk job (and probably slouch way too much), I started doing quick stretches every 60 - 90 minutes in my office.

Hopefully, these changes were not made in vain. 

Monday:

Planned: 50min X-train

Completed: Rest

Tuesday:

Planned: 4.5mi

Completed: 4.5mi, stretching, strength training

This was a very tough one, and I felt quite defeated afterward. I did this run on a treadmill and had to walk multiple times. I pretty much had to walk every 0.5 miles. 

Wednesday:

Planned: Interval 8X400m

Completed: Not a damn thing

There was way too much work that I had to complete between Monday and Tuesday so there was no way that I could fit in this run. 

Thursday:

Planned: 3mi

Completed: A few sprints

I had planned to combine Wednesday's and Thursday's run by doing the interval workout and follow it with the 3-mile run. Once again, work got in the way. No, wait. TV AND work got in the way. While working on some stuff for work, I stayed up watching Ken Burns' documentary about the Vietnam War. 

Around 8pm, I decided to put on my running clothes and do the intervals (at the minimal) before finishing work. Everything went wrong with this run. 

1. It was super windy and cold along the Hudson River, and I really needed another layer.

2. Both my phone and Apple Watch died, so I could not really keep track of my times for the intervals. Lately, I've been noticing that my iPhone has been dying a lot in cold weather. 

3. I packed the dumb tights that always seem to fall down when I run. After the third or fourth interval, I became so annoyed with constantly pulling up my tights while running. At that point, I pretty was over it. One, two, three strikes, and I was out. 

Thursday, Friday, Saturday:

Planned: 3m, Rest, and 9mi

Completed: Nothing. 

In my defense, I did plan to do some weight training on Friday. But I decided to go hang out with a friend in Hell's Kitchen, which actually became a little bit of a shitshow. However, what is a Friday night in NYC without some BS?

Sunday:

Planned: 3mi

Completed: 6.2mi

Although my long run for this week was supposed to be 9mi, I thought that it would be better to do the 6.2mi instead. Since I have been having back issues and did not want to risk it, I did a very easy run on the treadmill. I pretty much alternated between a very, very slow mile and a very slow mile. It did feel nice to finally complete a planned run. 

Well, that's my ho-hum week of "training". 

Goals for the week:

• Let's complete a full week of planned training activities. 

• A few posts ago, I mentioned that I joined a couple of running clubs. I really want to try to do a run with Harlem Runs on either Monday or Wednesday. Fingers crossed.