World's Strongest Dad

I was catching up on the blog of yet another everyman losing some weight and running some miles, when this entry about an inspirational father-son story caused me to start crying at work. Please be sure to read the story he links to, and watch the video.

Dick Hoyt was a self-described “porker” who had never run more than a mile at a time. Then one day, his wheelchair-bound 11-year-old son wanted to enter a 5-mile charity run to benefit an injured classmate. He struggled, but he managed to push Rick all the way. Rick loved it.

Today, Dick is 65 and Rick is 43. They have run the Boston Marathon 24 times. They’ve completed 212 triathlons, including four 15-hour Ironman events in Hawaii.

Fartlek

Hey Joe, guess what Samo had me do today? A fartlek run. It kicked my ass.

Novice!

Uh oh. I found a page of Weightlifting Performance Standards. And it turns out... I'm weak! Oh no!

In my last workout I did three sets of ten squats at 95 lbs and nearly three sets of ten bench presses at 70 lbs. According to this calculator that makes my theoretical one rep max 127 lbs and 93 lbs, respectively.

But according to the charts that squat weight and that bench press weight put me barely above novice. Novice!

Okay, I've been pretty haphazard in my weight lifting for the past, um, wow, over a year. Not intentional or directed or focused at all. Kind of like my running training was for a while. Time to dust off that awesome book I have and create a weightlifting plan again.

Health Fair

We had a health fair here at work, and among other things I had a few measurements taken.

Flexibility was measured with a "sit and reach" test, and I got 20", which put me one category below "Excellent." The personal trainer doing the test said that runners have really tight hamstrings. Yeah, I guess. I use to be more flexible, but since I'm still fairly flexible I just stretch enough to maintain my current level.

Body fat was measured with a three point caliper test. I got 25%... yeah. Well. Here are some random thoughts for my own reference:

Estimates of my body fat percentage based on my BMI don't accurately predict my body fat percentage (the equations put me between 28% and 30%). In other words, I have more lean mass than the average woman my age and my BMI.

If I were to reach my goal weight of 138 lbs without losing any lean mass (currently 114 lbs), I'd have 17% body fat.

Weight BF% Fat Lean
152    25  38  114
147    22  33  114
142    20  28  114
138    17  24  114

Long, High Run

Today I went for my long run: 5.1 miles in 62 minutes. Eh, so it was slow, but it was consistent! I ran away from my house for exactly 30 minutes and got back to my house in 32 minutes. I also, randomly, went over one the city's highest, steepest hills: Lafayette Square. Oops. From 50 feet above sea level to 378 feet, with some blocks at 25% grade. Whee.

You'll notice by looking at the President's Challenge meter on the right that I haven't made much progress toward my supposed goal. I earned only about 200 points a day on average on October. That really won't cut it. Now I'd have to earn 676 points a day on average for the rest of November to get the Silver Award. I earned about that many today, but I'm not going to run an hour every day for a month.

Still, I'm going to get as far as I can. I think I can still make the goal before the new year.

8 minute mile

Guess what I just did (mostly)? I (pretty much) ran an 8 minute mile. Whooo hooo!

It was on the treadmill, but at 1% incline, so it counts. What dulls the shine a bit is that three times, for a few seconds each time, I stepped to the side on the treadmill to catch my breath. 7.5 miles per hour is really fast, and I was mentally struggling in the second half. My skin was tingling, and it was just a lot faster than I've ever run for more than a few minutes at a time.

I should do more running drills.