Posts Tagged ‘Half Marathon’
Fitness: Getting Back on Track
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on January 13th, 2010
I’m going to publicly confess that I didn’t do all that great with my overall fitness toward the end of 2009 (and I mean more than just the usual holiday caloric free for all!). While Jan and I ran the half marathon in San Antonio, I focused on training for that to the exclusion of everything else. That was partly because of time – going out and running five miles and more at a stretch at an 11:30 pace can take a while! – but also because it was easier.
So, enough of “easy.” As of last week, I started P90X again, and upped the ante a bit by substituting Shaun T’s Insanity cardio workouts and running (when it’s not so darn cold!) for the P90X cardio workouts. I also decided to replace the Y0ga X workout with ChaLEAN Extreme Dynamic Yoga, which is an awesome Yoga workout. For me, the Yoga X workout is just too darn long, and while I love Tony Horton, I like Chalene Johnson’s rendition of kick-ass Yoga better (sorry, Tony!).
I’ve been exercising consistently – so far. I need to do better on the nutrition front, however: I’m cheating too much (especially at work!), and eating too many carbs and not enough protein. So I still need to get on top of that. But recognizing where your weaknesses are is half the battle.
For those who’d like to join me working out, I’m in WOWY most days around 4 p.m. EST. So let’s hook up for a virtual workout – just look for KWarrior.
In the meantime, if you want to learn a bit more about why this sci-fi/fantasy author thinks that it’s important to take precious time away from writing to work out, head on over to the other site my wife and I have at www.FitClubToday.com, which is dedicated to helping folks just like you reach your fitness goals (or get you to think about how being fit can totally change your life!).
And welcome to 2010 – get out there and make the most of it!
San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon Recap
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on December 21st, 2009
I see I’ve been terrible about keeping up my blogging – bad boy! Well, I decided to drop back and punt, picking things up with the San Antonio Rock and Roll Half-Marathon that we ran on 15 November!
First of all, I really enjoyed San Antonio and wished we’d had more time there. The River Walk area is like something the engineers at Disney would come up with (sorta reminded me of the Pirates of the Caribbean), and the town itself was very appealing to me. We saw the Alamo at night, which I think was a lot more interesting visually than it would have been during the day, although it was closed so we couldn’t check out the inside.
As for the half-marathon, well, that was an experience! First of all, outside of sitting in a stadium, I’ve never been in with that many people in my life: nearly 30,000 participants! We were staying in a Best Western near the freeway, and while we had the misfortune of being close to the railroad tracks in that part of town (honk-HOOOONNNNKKK! through the night), we were in a great spot to get to the shuttle buses to the start line, which we boarded at around 5:45 or so.
The bus dropped us off “near” the start line. I put that in quotes because we had to walk what seemed like half a mile to get to the start line, and then had to keep on walking to get to our “corral,” or designated start group. But that’s okay: everybody was in an upbeat mood, getting psyched for the race.
Then there were the porta-johns. Folks, one piece of advice if you ever want to participate in one of these things: do yourself a huge favor and bring along your own roll of toilet paper and some sanitary wipes in individual packets. I’ll wager that there were at least two hundred porta-johns around the start line area, and every single one of them was out of TP before the race started. And having to do your business without anything to clean your hands off with…well, you get the picture. One final note about porta-johns: make damn sure you lock the door. There were so many people lined up at these things, a new person would come to the head of one of the countless lines and check to see if a john was empty, only to discover that it wasn’t, but the occupant hadn’t locked the door! We saw a couple of hilarious incidents of this that morning – you’ve been warned!
The initial start of the race was a bit anticlimactic. I say “initial,” because with this many people you start in waves – that’s why everyone’s in a corral. It was probably a good forty-five minutes before our corral moved up to the start line, and then we were off! It didn’t take us long to realize that we were probably a lot further back than we technically should have been. You’re assigned to your corral based on your estimated pace time, and we’d put down 12:00, when we actually averaged closer to 11:15. But that’s okay – it was a great psychological boost to be passing a bunch of people! Besides, your real start and end times are marked by a little electronic tag you wear on your shoe, so when you cross the sensors at the start/finish lines, your time is recorded. Cool.
Now, this race is one of the “Rock and Roll Marathons,” which means – among other things – that they have a lot of local bands sprinkled along the course. This was pretty cool! However, we made the mistake of thinking there was going to be music along most of the way, so we left our iPhone headsets at home. That was a mistake: some of the bands were really good, but there were huge music-less gaps we had to run through. So, another note to would-be marathoners: always make sure you’ve got your music with you!
Another thing that was great was some of the signs the local folks put up. There were tons of people out cheering us on, which was great (thanks, San Antonio!). My favorite was this: “Beer all gone. Kenyans drank it…” Read the rest of this entry »
The San Antonio Half-Marathon: One Month Away!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on October 16th, 2009
It’s only a month now until the San Antonio half-marathon that my wife and I are going to run in. We’re not serious runners, but needed a challenge and an excuse to see a town that sounds like a lot of fun.
So we’ve been training along the “half-marathon for noobs” sort of plan, and got up to six miles before our schedule was interrupted by our trip to Salt Lake City last week. We did get in some running there, but not the long-distance mileage we needed: last Sunday was supposed to be a ten-mile run. Ummm, I think we’re a bit short!
My wife, Jan, is doing fine, but I managed to pull my right calf muscle a bit while we were in Salt Lake, and so far can only run about a mile and a half before it starts hurting. Today we were supposed to do five miles: Jan ran the whole way when she went out (while I was at work), and I ran about a mile and a half and then walked the rest as fast as I could. Despite how it may look (aside from sorta silly, at least in my case), it’s darn hard to walk fast for long distances!
Anyway, I’m going to try and run/walk my mileage and hope that my calf heals up by November 15th when we run the race!
P90 and ChaLEAN Extreme: Change Your Life
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on February 16th, 2009
People have lots of different reasons for making changes in their lives. Sometimes we make changes just because we want to, other times we make changes because we’re forced to. And sometimes we need to make changes, but because change is often difficult, we don’t.
In my case, I needed to change the way I was treating my body. While I wasn’t terribly overweight (although I wasn’t exactly a lean, mean machine), my world view changed with the blood test taken as part of a routine physical last year: my cholesterol was over 300 (shouldn’t be over 200), with a triglyceride level that was just over 1200 (which shouldn’t be over 150!). That’s bad. Very bad.
I had always had marginal cholesterol, but that took the cake. I think it scared my doctor more than me. I had tried some medications before, but they didn’t seem to work very well. But that was because I couldn’t be bothered with changing other aspects of my life.
So, I was a heart attack waiting to happen. Not good. It was time to do something about this. Read the rest of this entry »
This Year’s Goal: To Run a Half-Marathon
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on February 6th, 2009
Last year’s goal was to get In Her Name published, and I did! On top of that, I managed to lose a bunch of weight (a total of 35 pounds), and brought my blasted cholesterol down from 300 (yeah, you read that right!) to nearly 170 – without medication.
How did I do that? Through a combination of getting rid of all our junk food and eating clean, getting on the Beachbody.com fitness bandwagon (starting with the P90 program). And – most importantly – my wife, Jan, and I have provided each other mutual support by doing it together. We’ve both been exercising regularly (although life has interfered now and again), and that’s made a huge difference for both of us. We’ve also had great support from our Beachbody coach, Doris Flaiz, and the other folks in the Beachbody community.
But I was talking to a friend the other day who does a lot of running (he’s done several marathons), and got to thinking that a half marathon might be something Jan and I could do. I can’t conceive of running a full marathon, but a half – 13 miles – that’s something that I think (between running and walking) that we could achieve this year.
And after he told me about “rock ‘n’ roll marathons” (and half marathons), that got me to thinking that it would be really cool to go to some of these things. We’ve gone to various places, but usually for work-related things. But this way we could actually see something of the cities we visit, not to mention meeting up with some cool people!
