Doing the math

OK, I could add this to my previous post, but I'm going to create a completely new one.

I just did the math on my calibration walk with the pedometer.

The first half mile was 1,170 steps.

Then I turned around and basically walked back to where I started from. That was 997 steps.

And the first mile came out to 2,167 steps.

Then I walked a 1.25 mile loop and I didn't have a good point in the middle to stop and measure.

That 1.25 mile walk came out to 2,456 steps. Dividing by 1.25 equals 1964.8 for the second mile.


So one mile measured out at 2,167 steps and a second mile measured out at 1,964.8 steps.

Perhaps one simple way to estimate is that 2,000 steps equals about a mile, 1000 steps equals about a half mile and 500 steps equals about a quarter mile.

If nothing else, that will work well for simplicity's sake and I should be able to remember it.

New pedometer

I bought a pedometer the other day, mostly to get a feel for how much I walk when I'm at work. Sometimes late at night when I'm the only one I walk laps around the newsroom to break up the monotony.

I've always been a little leery if how well pedometers can measure your steps and calculate that out to a mile. Surely every step isn't mechanically the same.

But anyway, it will be good for guesstimations and also it will give me more motivation not to be tied to my seat while I'm at work.

So for today's walking workout for the purposes of calibration I wrote down the number on my pedometer, walked half a mile from home and wrote down the number. Turned around, came back home and wrote down the number. Then I did a 1.25 mile loop and wrote down that number.

I'll write down those numbers here and then do the math a little later.

starting number --- 1592
after .5 miles ------2763
after another .5 ----3759
after 1.25 miles ----6215


What was even better about this evening's workout is I ran 2 miles in the morning so it was a double work-out day. I did break a sweat or two in the evening so I believe it definitely counts as a workout.

And I'm pretty sure I've read that you burn about the same amount of calories whether you're running or walking. So all in all, a good day.

I am thankful for this day.

"This weight won't lose itself..."

I saw someone post this on Twitter just now: "well, this weight won't lose itself, so i must go... :( off to the gym..."

It reminded me of a recent Seven Habits of Highly Effective People workshop I went to at work.

One of my favorite parts of the workshop was the language that proactive people use.

I think it can be well summed up in one example: Reactive people are prone to say things like "I have to do X" while proactive people say "I choose to do X."

I suppose there could be a lot of analyses of the statement "this weight won't lose itself so I must go ... to the gym" and how it's not proactive. I won't delve into all of them.

I must say, I kind of enjoyed the image of weight losing itself, weight getting lost, in the moment, in the exercise, in meditation...

60 minutes

Today I went to the park and explored the trails and ran for about an hour. I marked this down as 5 miles in my log. That's got to be close to correct. I'm not sure.

When I ran 5 miles last week, it was just over 60 minutes.

I don't want to focus too much on time or distance. I ran for 60 minutes and I could have possibly run longer.

I had two moments where I walked briefly as the trails disappeared and clearly I'd taken wrong turns. But I enjoyed myself and had a good run.

Although it will be sure nice when the weather warms up. I left my car with bare hands and before I got to the trailhead, I turned back and got my gloves. I figured since I was wearing running pants with big pockets, I could put the gloves in there if I got too warm.

But I did not get too warm.

I also ran to Michigan as a Michigan park butts up again the park where I was at. I will explore that more in the future.

Today was a good day. Any day when you can go running for an hour is a good day.

Time for new shoes

I went to a park earlier this week and ran some miles on trails.

I also ran up a tubing hill a couple of times at the end. I think I should have done the hills earlier as I had trouble making it to the top vertically at the end.

But it was good.

I'm thinking about buying some new trail shoes for running out at that park.

I'm wondering how soon I should buy regular new running shoes. I've got about 106 miles on my current shoes which doesn't feel like enough to buy new shoes, but they're almost a year old so that kind of makes me wonder.

I'm a little leery of asking shoe sellers if I should buy new shoes because I fear their answer might always be yes, you need new shoes.

But right now I feel good. My legs feel a little tired so I'm taking some more time off before running again.

My main goal is to go running after church on Sunday and continue trying to push my schedule so it won't feel too strange to continue to be awake at 10 a.m.

This race will definitely have a late start but I'm excited about that.

Kyrie Elieson

Today I ran five miles. It felt good. At times I wondered about the run and about my legs, but in the end, I'm happy with how it went.

In the beginning my plan was to mix in some walk breaks to force myself to take it easy. However, I looked at my watch and decided that I was running so slow I didn't need walk breaks.

I just needed to relax and stay in a groove of some kind.

I found the best way to stay in the groove was to repeat some prayers, the Lord's prayer, the Hail Mary and the Jesus Prayer.

The Jesus prayer worked best. The full prayer, I think, is Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I started it with you two words in Greek - Kyrie eleison. Then when I added the English translation of those two words, I had a really good groove - Kyrie eleison, Lord, have mercy. One repetition would be almost exactly 8 steps.

That's three runs and I think I'll take off at least two days to recover and see how my legs feel after this five mile run.

But the couch to 10K plan is working smoothly so far.

If I can run 5 miles today, I can definitely run 6 miles in three weeks.

Life is beautiful when you can set a goal and steadily work towards it.

Couch to 10K

I've started my own 3-week couch to 10 K plan.

My goal is basically to finish. I would say to run all the way, but what if it seems like the best thing strategically is to walk a bit. We'll see.

I did a few two-mile runs during the winter to try and get in shape, but it was unsatisfying to run so short. And I was out-of-shape to run faster and it was too cold to really plod along too much further.

Add to that my current overnight work schedule - I generally work from about 6 pm - 5 am three nights a week.

I'm planning to sign up for a 10K on April 10.

Thursday I ran 3 miles, Sunday I ran 2 miles and my plan for the morning is to run 5 miles. Either in the morning or after I sleep during the day. I haven't completed decided yet.

I had originally planned to run 5 miles today but I thought it would be good to take it easy. Later on I realized that my run was kind of like a recovery run. Beautiful. I feel great right now.

It's good to have a goal. I'll come back here to post again and update my training as I try to achieve this simple goal of running in a 10K and getting swept up in the fun of being around a lot of runners.