Saturday, December 15, 2007

Stuff

Today:
Run 25 miles

Yesterday:
Run 13 miles
Bike 11 miles
Lift 7 lifts
-3 sets of 12 reps

Thursday:
Bike Commute 3 miles

Check out "The Story of Stuff." Much like "An Inconvenient Truth" it doesn't really say anything all that new and shocking, but also like "An Inconvenient Truth" it ties together several ideas that most Americans never think about in a way that hopefully can get some people thinking. Unlike the issue of global climate change though, the issue of global over consumption of "stuff" has nothing for those unwilling to accept the truth to hide behind. Whereas many people's response to global warming is that it's simply a scientific cycle that has little to do with humankind, this idea of mass over consumption has no alibi. There's nothing we can blame this on except our culture's insistence upon mass production/consumption that has become so ingrained in our mind's as the norm. And there's no scientific cycle that will do anything to change this if we don't each make a choice to do our part and lay off the "stuff."

As for my training: A pretty crappy week. I felt good early in the week but then on Thursday I just had no motivation at all so I took the day off. I felt mentally better yesterday but physically very weak. My plan for today was to do 35 miles but I was feeling mentally and physically crappy so I cut it short and only did 25. I always struggle with cutting planned runs short. I know that physically it's good to listen to my body but mentally it's tough for me to back down from a planned run (I only do about one or two runs a week where I actually plan out ahead of time how far I'm going to go), and then when I do I find myself feeling like I made the wrong decision. Thus my plan is to see how I feel tomorrow and probably go for a 20 miler. At least that way my total of 45 for the weekend will be the same as if I'd done the 35/10 that I was planning on.

Because of the day off Thursday and 10 miles shorter than I'd hoped for today my weekly totals were down a bit from last week but overall I'm still pretty much right where I want to be right now with my training and hopefully I'm just in a little 3 day funk right now.

Weekly totals: Bike 42 miles; Run 94 miles; 19.25 hours.

5 comments:

  1. sounds like you are overtraining. are you doing any periodization? or just doing 100 mile week after 100 mile week?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the great stuff link. Good timing for xmas.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ironic you should ask that now matt. up until now i've just been slowly building up my training with little to no periodization. just last night though I decided that I'm probably going to approach my planned new year's day 50 mile training run somewhat similar to the way I would if it were a race. that is with a bit of a taper before and a bit of a recovery period after and then get back at the steady training for about 3 or 4 weeks after that before beginning my actual taper for the iditarod invitational which starts on feb. 24th.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Geoff ... A quick thanks for posting "the story of stuff" link. Wow... I'm speechless. Hopefully humanity will its act together before we trash the whole damn planet. I must share this video.

    ReplyDelete