Has it been a week? Odds and Ends

I guess I didn't have much to say this last week. I have been recovering from my marathon and getting back into cross training. The thing I noticed about my marathon training was that it left precious little time for anything else. Now I can get back to normal.



This week I ran 2.51 miles, all on Saturday. I just wanted to get out there and stretch my legs and start back into a running schedule. It went well and I even scored a mile under 10:00. I wasn't really trying to do that, it just happened. Now I will try to get a bit faster over the summer while I get back on track with my martial arts. I have been trying to smooth myself out in that regard over the last week. I was supposed to test like 7 weeks ago, so I am behind schedule. My instructor is an understanding soul so I hope I can work something out over the next couple of weeks. I have been practicing a good deal over the last week and I feel I am close to form. I just need to pick up my push-up totals over the next couple of weeks.



Over the summer I plan on doing a 3 day a week running schedule. I hope to do two runs during the week and then one on the weekend. I am going to be working on speed so I will probably be going shorter than I previously did. I think my long run will be in the neighborhood of 6 miles (a weekly mileage of about 12 to 16 miles). I need a bit of time to get recharged on running. In the mean time I can focus on my martial arts work and get back to a more fluid level. There is always something to do.

In some unrelated news, I finished a book Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams. For anyone training in the martial arts this is a great book. There are some excellent training insights and philosophical approaches that I found to be helpful to think about. Additionally, there are some nice stories about Mr. Hyams training with Bruce Lee, which is worth the price of the book by itself. Mr. Hyams does a great job of giving personality to some larger than life figures in the martial arts. You get a real sense of who these folks were. I was happy that I picked this up.