For anybody who sits in front of a computer all day, it’s important to get exercise during non-work hours. With that said, I’ve done very little to make working out a critical part of my week. If anything even remotely requires attention, exercise is the first thing to get dropped.
When I do have time to exercise, I generally prefer going for a run through our beautiful neighborhood or tossing my mountain bike in the back of the truck and heading over to the nearby trails at Harbison State Forrest. I’ve never competed in either of those arenas, but I’ve been slowly building up my endurance and can now run about 4 miles. I’m rather proud of that accomplishment, but the idea of running 6.2 miles (10K) by the end of March sounds like a big challenge. One that I’ll start training for this week.
How did that happen? Well a bunch of our friends from the University of South Carolina have been talking about participating in the Cooper River Bridge 10K (bridgerun.com) in Charleston, SC on March 21, 2007. Some planned to walk and some planned to run. I wasn’t planning to do either, but yesterday Amy’s friend Adriana said she would walk it if Amy signed up, and Amy said she would go if I would run it…and if Amy wants me to do it, then I’ll certainly give it my best effort. So here I am, a novice runner, trying to figure out how to train for a 10K. I don’t plan to really compete with anyone there, but as a personal goal, I’d like to be able to run the whole thing. One of our friends recommended Hal Higdon’s 10K novice training program. Fortunately, it’s an 8 week program and there’s just enough weeks before the race for me to go through the entire thing. I plan to push each day back so that the weeks start with Sunday and end with Saturday, since that’s the race day. In an unrelated turn of events, I also just ordered my first “real” mountain bike last weekend: A 19″ Gary Fisher Piranha from Harrell’s Bicycle World. I’ve been talking about getting a decent bike since before we moved to South Carolina, and after a lot of research and test rides, the Piranha seemed like the best bang for my buck. I’ll probably post more about the new bike after I’ve ridden it a few times, but you can bet that on my cross training days I’ll be tearin’ up the trails.
Anybody have any advice for this first time 10K runner and novice mountain biker?
I have no advice regarding running. As far as mountian biking goes, I higly recommend padded shorts. The nice thing is that these days, they make some that look a lot like board shorts, no more need to wear only skin tight lycra. If you want, I can send some links to some mail order places I’ve gotten stuff from in the past.
Let me know what you think of the disc brakes. I haven’t even made it up to Vee brakes yet.
B
Thanks B, Padded shorts are at the top of my list but I’m still trying to decided between baggies and the standard skin-tight ones. From what I’ve seen, the baggies are just skin-tights with a lycra short sewn inside. I’ve got plenty of old shorts that I can just wear over top of the lycra. As far as disc brakes go, that was one of my requirements with the new bike. The trails around here have some steep drops and can get very muddy in the low areas, so I wanted something with stopping power regardless of what I sloshed through.
As I remember, you have a nice Trek bike. The bike I was riding before this purchase was a Magna Glacier Point which I bought new from Target for about $75 3 years ago. Kinda looked like this one on craigslist, so I really don’t have much to compare it to. Let’s just say I’m happy to have survived riding the trails on that bike.
I used to both run and do road training on a bike (cycling is waaay easier on the body, but that might not be the case with trail riding) .. as far as the running goes, I’d try and run at least one or 2 eight-ten milers before race day .. it’ll make the 10k seem like a walk in the park .. a long hard park, but a park nonetheless .. best wishes on your race!
I’ve been meaning to take up cycling properly for months now; but never ‘find’ the time. Running’s my main and I’m trying to build it up – a good network of running partners is the most important thing until you really get the buzz!! 😀
Padded shorts? C’mon, if you’re trail riding you shouldn’t be spending too much time on the ‘ol seat. You’re not in spin class! 🙂
As for the run, I dunno. You’ve always been able to outrun me. Just make sure to take a few days off of exercise before the big day. Also keep your iron intake up = more heme for the globin = more O2 carrying capability. (well, that’s the way it’s supose to work) Enjoy.
Jered
wasup man it good that you wanna do this. My advise is for running, breath with your gut so you can get 100% air to your lungs and not only 50% if you do that then you will go far, trust me it works, im a cycler. k peace for now 😉
hows the stuff common for ya bud? keepen at it?
Hey Bryan, thanks for the breathing advice before and for checking on me. I meant to post my progress here, but I’ve been so busy. Fortunately though, I’ve been doing great with the training. I haven’t rigidly stuck to the workout schedule, but I have been getting a few days of running or cross training (been playing dodgeball on Tuesdays), and I go for my long run each week on either Saturday or Sunday. I started at 4 miles and added a little each week and for the first time last weekend I ran 6.3 miles (10k is 6.2) which took me a little over an hour. I’ve been using a site called runningmap.com to create my weekend routes, and I have each route save as a bookmark on my home computer. This past weekend is the first weekend so far that I didn’t do any distance running because I’m in Austin, TX for SxSW. I’ll be back on the bandwagon next week though trying to improve my 10k time.