A Birthday Celebration! Two week review!

August is what I consider the best month of the year. Other than the extreme heat that typically comes along with it, August is the month that everything seems to happen in. Students of all ages typically head back to the classroom, fall sports practices start up in preparation for the upcoming competition season, and it's the month when I was born. So I'm officially beginning the final year of my 20's which saw an awful lot of time with my eyes staring into books, notes, and exams. That basically engulfed 7 years of my 20's.  I've now been a chiropractor for 2 years and it has been a lot of fun. I love every opportunity I get to help someone else improve their life and/or their performance.  So how am I going to celebrate the final year of my 20's?  That's the ultimate question that I've been asking myself and I think I have an idea for how I'm going to do it. Here's what I think I'm going to do to celebrate my last year in my 20's.

First of all, I've always wanted to complete 100 push ups straight through.  There was a time when I could do 50 straight through.  This will be the first thing I attempt to mark off my list of goals for my now 29 year old self. I started this on August 1st and I'm already up to 35 straight through by adding 5 per day. I don't expect to accomplish this in 13 more days, but if I keep at it, I should be able to complete this in about a month or so I think.

My next goal will be to run a new personal best in the 10k and then again in the half marathon. Currently, my personal best in the 10k is 34:04 which I ran in college on the track. I've come close a few times on the roads since but just missed by about 4 seconds a couple years ago. Following that, I'd like to regain my half marathon P.R. shape from 2012 when I ran 1:12:58.  I don't know for sure if I'll ever repeat that feat, but I sure would like to get close. In the following Winter/Spring, I would like to run a new personal best in the 3000 meters which would likely have to be completed on an indoor track. If I am able to accomplish that feet, it should roll me directly into the next goal to finally dip under 16 minutes in the 5k.  My next goal will be to run a Marathon under 6 minutes per mile. I came very close to this just this past June. I averaged 6:02 per mile so that makes me believe I can still accomplish this goal.

The simplest way for me to put it is that I intend to run a P.R. in pretty much all common distances from the 3,000 meter up to the marathon. Do I believe that I will have failed if I turn 30 and don't accomplish all the goals? Of course not, but I intend to do my best for the next year to see if I can't have the best year of running yet.

Now to recap the past two weeks.  Kimi and I have been training pretty well for the last couple weeks. We put in our first tempo run on Saturday. It was to be a 6 mile tempo run between 6:00-6:05 pace followed by a long cool down of 5 miles. We were rolling through the first 4 miles of the tempo when our momentum sort of fell apart. It wasn't bad, but we weren't able to hit our goal pace for the remaining two miles. We might have started out with a tempo run that was slightly too long for our first one. Sunday was an awesome run that neither of us saw coming. We had a 10 miler and we decided to stay home and try a new route. We ventured out on the South Creek/Wilson's Creek trail to the west and were we ever taken back by the hills. We haven't ran hills like these in quite some time other than the Wilson's Creek Battlefield hills.  The run was pretty solid averaging under 6:50 pace per mile.

Prior to the weekend, we had put in some solid miles including another 10 miler and an 11 miler during the week. Those weren't great runs by any means but they weren't terrible either. The
 weekend before that was a great experience. Kimi ran the Diva Dash 5k in Tulsa where she took 2nd place. We were fortunate enough to walk into a Sports Authority that was having a going out of business sale where I was able to find 6 pairs of running shoes for $36 a pair (and that included the tax). I should be set for nearly the entire 30th year of my life. :)

This week brings high mileage and a couple good solid workouts on the schedule so hopefully I'll have some good news to report during my next blog post!

For now, I'm signing off to go celebrate my 29th birthday with a simple 5 mile run this afternoon.

We even picked up one pair for Kimi!