At the beginning of April, I set some fitness goals for myself. I trained for a marathon last year, but it was cancelled about a month before the event. This time, I wanted to train through summer instead of winter. As stated before, I ran in high school and college, so I have a great base for distance running. I had trained last year down to a time of almost exactly 3 hours for a marathon, with a goal of running 2:50 on race day. My goal for this year is a bit more ambitious, gunning for 2:45, which is holding just under a 6:20 pace for 26+ miles. Oy Vie. Moving to shorter distances, I would like a 37:30 10k, which is a steady 6 minute mile. I went and ran my first 10k in about a year to gain a baseline, and finished in 44:30. Not terrible, but that mean I have to be a full minute faster every mile. That is a long way to go. A goal of 18:00 for a 5k is about a 5:45 pace, which is also a minute faster each mile. Again; Oy vie. One thing which may very well help me meet these speed goals is by focusing primarily on my mile time. I set a very aggressive goal of 4:55, a time I haven’t hit since my teenage years. I am utilizing a program of progressive speed to see how well it works to improve my mile time. I ran a 6:44 last month, giving me TWO MINUTES to drop. A triple crown Oy Vie! Two somewhat more unnecessary goal are my 400 time as well as the pacer, or Beep Test. If I can run a 400 meter in 58 seconds, I would be going at a great clip to hit my mile time. So I also need to focus a LOT on just increasing speed. The Pacer, a test where you run 20 meters back and forth at a progressively faster time, is a challenging workout. In high school, I completed 158 reps. I completed 75 my first test this year and my goal is 125, far below my previous high, but still a very respectable score.
Next are my power lifting weights. I have always been good at deadlift, so a goal of near 600lbs isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but definitely aggressive. I have already maxed out all weights I have for my bar at 390, and it was an easy rep, so I probably have about 150lbs to add to the lift. I tested my squat at 365, also a bit easier than I anticipated, so adding 90 lbs is again aggressive, but not unreasonable. My bench is not likely, though. I trained exclusively for bench for a few months, starting at 275lbs, and plateaued at 297.5lbs. Hopefully, this time I will do better.
Lastly, here are two famous fitness tests which I have taken aim at. The first is a newer one, and likely more well known at this point. The Murph is a workout which my friend claimed is so difficult he said “I just read the workout and it made me throw up.” It consists of running a mile, completing 100 pull ups, 200 pushups, and 300 body squats, then again running 1 mile. Ideally, the workout is completed while wearing a 20lbs weight vest, matching the ballistic armor the workouts name sake Lt. Michael Murphy wore as a Navy SEAL. There are many ways to do the reps between runs. The best way I have found is called the Cindy, where you complete 20 sets of 5/10/15 reps. I attempted my first Cindy to prepare for the Murph in January, and couldn’t complete it, so it is very difficult. The second is the 300 workout, named after the movie for which the workout was utilized. It consists of 25 pull ups, 50 deadlifts of 135lbs, 50 pushups, 50 box jumps of 2 foot height, 50 floor wipers (50 each each side, that is), 50 clean and press with at least 36 lbs (25 each arm), then finish it off with 25 more pull ups. Each set must be completed before advancing to the next movement. The goal is under 20 minutes. I recently completed it in 17:50. But there is still a lot of time to drop to set a PR.
