New exercise routine

I've been pretty good about staying active, and keeping in shape. I play tennis twice a week, I run/bike 2-3 times a week. I do push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups on an intermittent basis. Starting this week, I'm going to add this exercise routine everyday:

In 3 minutes do: 25 push-ups, 25 sit-ups, 5 pull-ups and rest until the 3 minutes is up. Do this 5 times. Right now, I can only do this 4 times. I'm hoping to get strong enough to be able to do this 10 times (30 minutes).

I'll report back with progess at some later time.

Half marathon

I did it! 13 miles in 1 hours 59 minutes.

It has been a goal of mine to run the half marathon in 2 hours or less. This is roughly twice the time of the half marathon men's record time. This is the 5th time that I've attempted to do this. And the best I've done in the past was 2 hours 12 minutes, the worst is 2 hours 30 minutes.

My learning from these attempts:

1. the most important element is temperature. it was 60 degrees when I started, I think this is the coolest it's been of all the time I tried. I didn't even need water. (i could have used some, but my daughter who was supposed to ride a support bike with water slept in and didn't get out to the trail until I was done)

2. upper body strength is important. Even though I've been running/training a lot less this time compared the previous attempts, I've been been doing a lot more push-ups than before. Even though my legs were tired, but my upper body was less tired than usual.

3. in my condition, it was important that I forced myself to take walking breaks during the run. This time my plan was to run 9 minutes and walk 1 minute, throughout the run. I was able to run at a faster pace when I ran (8 to 8:30 minutes per mile), and it took a lot longer before my legs got sore. In the past, I was in better running shape so I ran continuously, and by the 10th miles, my legs and feet were so sore I wound up walking a lot in the last 3 miles.

4. better preparations. This time I ate a yogurt 1 hour before running, as well as drinking a lot of water. I didn't do that as much before. It really helped because I wasn't running out of energy during the run. In the past, about 90 minutes into the run, I would feel depleted of energy and water.

Notes from the run:

1. felt a twinge in my right ankle at the start of run, that went away quickly

2. at mile 3, felt a twinge in my left knee, that also went away quickly

3. at mile 7, the left knee now begins to have a light constant dull pain

4. at mile 11, the right knee now begins to have some pain, fairly noticeable. the 1 minute of walking in between does seem to relieve it somewhat

5. at mile 12, both hamstring seems to tighten up, i slowed down my pace a little, and that kept the legs from cramping up even more.

3.0 miles mark at 26:55

6.5 miles mark at 57:49

13.0 miles mark at 1:58:53