Sunday, January 11, 2009

Scheduling the Week and Back To Push Ups!

It's Sunday evening, and I'm exhausted from another Sunday of chores, shuttling the kiddos around and trying to cram everything in.  And now, I'm looking at how the week ahead of me is unfolding.  YIKES!

Lots of things going on - I have some work folks coming into town for meetings Tuesday through Thursday, so if I want to run on those days it will need to be early.  And I'll likely want to run on a few of those days, as I'll probably be going out for lunch - which usually means a higher caloric intake (perhaps I can eat a big salad for at least one of those meals...that's a good goal!).

I'm also scheduled for my first-ever platelets donation tomorrow.  I have been a pretty regular blood donor, however, I have noticed that my HR on my runs after a whole blood donation elevates (by 20 bpm or so during the first week?) and I'm not back to my "normal" HR for about 3 weeks.  With the platelets donation, the red blood cells are put back into your bloodstream, so I'm hoping that my running will not be impacted as much as a normal whole-blood donation.  However, I'm a bit freaked out about sitting in the donation chair for 2 hours with a needle in each arm (one to take blood out, and the other to put it back in after they get the platelets).  Luckily, they provide a personal DVD player during the donation - so I'll likely hit a Redbox or Blockbuster in the morning.  This will surely be blog fodder for tomorrow.

So...my training plan calls for three weekly runs - a 3, 5 and 3 miler and then a 9 miler on the weekend.  Since I'm not sure how my body is going to react to the platelets donations, and I may be pressed for time later in the week, I'm going to shoot to do the 5 miler tomorrow morning and then a 3 miler on both Wednesday and Thursday (perhaps I'll up Thursday's to a 4 miler...we'll see how I'm doing).

Lastly, I will try to get back into the push up groove again.  I did a push up exhaustion test today and did 33 consecutive push ups!  That would normally put my into column 3 of Week 4, but I know my limitations (OK...I'm wimping out a bit here) and I'm going to scale back and do column 3 of Week 3 first.  Hey...at least I'm starting up again - right???

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