Jl'm Marathon Training #9

-
This post includes 3 entries - the latest appears last.

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

During the course of the day I neglected to psych myself up for running, like I usually do. In fact, I almost forgot that I was to go for a jog in the evening. I didn't prepare by drinking water during the day, although I did keep to a light lunch and no snacking in the afternoon - but that's become the norm, rather than the exception.

At about 7pm I remembered that I was supposed to train that evening. I had that niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach that it really isn't a good idea. I should put it off. But I forced myself to go. Discipline must prevail.

Certain that I was not going to do well, I set off at about 9pm. I started off just fine, but a stitch had me in its evil clutches for approximately 4km. It was tough, but I kept working at altering my breathing patterns and doing the other breathing tricks I learned about on the wise Internet. The stitch eventually faded, but it had worn me out and I struggled to find rhythm.

Luckily for me, I self-motivate and I pushed myself at the end, increasing my speed until I built myself up to the pace of an energetic geriatric with a walking frame. Sprinting to the finish line was painful, but I still managed a personal best of 57:04 over 10km (not 10.3km)

Sunday, 20 December 2009

This time I was ready for the 10km. I did all of the mental and physical preparation I could during the day. I worked myself up to a state where I wouldn't be able to rest until I had completed the course.

Then I made a mistake.

During my warm-up stretches I parted from my normal routine and did some lunges, thinking they would stretch my thigh muscles. Being enthusiastic, I did quite a few, reasoning that the more I do, the better I'll feel schlepping myself up the hills. The only result I could see was that my thighs hurt from before I set out until the day after. I won't be doing lunges anymore before a run.

The self-inflicted handicap did not help as I really felt awful during the entire 10km. I fought off a stitch that came, went, extended up my arm, duplicated itself on the other side and then went around again for seconds. But once I had the finish line in my sights, I dug deep for the last reserves of strength hiding in the folds of my leg muscles. Sprinting home, I managed a personal best time of 56:43 over 10km. A great result considering it was an ugly run.

A Momentous Occasion

I did it. I signed up and paid my registration fee. I am now an official entrant in the Jerusalem Marathon 10km event. I was the fifth person to register. I have now put my money where my substantially sized mouth is. And I get a free T-Shirt (that I paid for with the fee.)

Now that there is real money on the table, this is serious.

Comments

  1. AvitalpDecember 22, 2009 at 1:32 PM

    How much did it cost?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yossi KarpDecember 22, 2009 at 7:24 PM

    Entry to the 10k event is 90 shekels for non-Jerusalem residents.

    Here is the website for more details: http://hmarathon.jerusalem.muni.il/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Playing With My Mind

-
G-d is playing with my mind. A few months ago my wife and I decided to buy a lottery ticket. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. What irked me was knowing, not so very deep in my heart, that I was flushing money down the drain. I mean, what are the odds? According to this site on Lottery Math, The odds of a "Lotto" style lottery can be found with the formula: n! / (n - r)! r! where n is the highest numbered ball and r is the number of balls chosen. This is called in math a combination . An easier way to think about it is if there are 40 balls and 6 are chosen, there are 40 possible numbers that can come up first, leaving 39 that can come up second, then 38, 37, 36, and finally 35 on the final number. To find out how many numbers that is you multiply 40 ×39 ×38 ×37 ×36 × 35 = 2,763,633,600 making the odds 2 and a half billion to one. Two and a half billion to one?! The money spent on the ticket could easily have gone to purchasing at least one bottle of beer with a 100% cha...
Read more

Act Your Age, Not Your Shoe Size

-
Image
The other day I was traveling to work and the conversation on the bus was more animated than usual, which means that there was conversation on the bus. One of my colleagues joked that although he is 40, he has a mental age of 17. In other words, he still thinks he's Superboy when he's actually more like the father from the Wonder Years. This got me thinking about what my mental age is. I also sometimes feel like I'm still a teenager. In fact, I cracked a joke the other day and my daughter's friend remarked that my jokes are just as good as Eitan's. Who'se Eitan? Her nearly-thirteen-year-old brother. The phrase "act your age, not your shoe size" would not really apply in this situation because using the  Australian shoe size chart , my joke was almost spot on, give or take 2.5 years. There are a number of ways I can measure my mental age: Self assessment Friend Psychologist I decided that none of these options would be accurate enough. For st...
Read more

Lessons from a Couch

-
Image
I was looking around at the electronic devices we use everyday. None of them are single-function, for example: My mobile phone is also my camera, diary, MP3 player, GPS device and multimedia device My camera is also a YouTube uploader, GPS tracker and a photo-editing device My desk phone at work is also an address book My MP3 player is also a radio and a storage device My e-book reader also surfs the web Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that HTC has developed a number of smart phones with Facebook deeply embedded into the interface and that there are dozens more planned for release in the near future. I recall the good old days when a phone was used to make phone calls. Now, every device we have needs to be able to do more than one thing. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a modern smart-phone is that it is "multitasking" - that it has the ability to run two or more applications simultaneously with the ability to switch between them. Older smart-phone operating syste...
Read more