In the marathon world, Sunday stands for one thing ... the long run. The long run is the most important part of the training as it seems to be where you really start to acclimate your body to multiple hours of cardio. Unfortunately for me, Sunday stands for the long elliptical (at least for the time being). I got up early this morning and drove down to the Y. Since the YMCA that I go to is right in the middle of the city, parking the car can be kind of a pain. Thankfully, I found a spot and got into the gym right when they opened at 9am. By 9:15, I had changed and took my place on my elliptical.
I didn't know how far I was going to go when I started the workout, but I knew that I had to get at least 2 hours in. The workout started off slow, since my legs just didn't seem to want to work. I am not sure if its because I had just rolled out of bed minutes before, but the legs just didn't seem to have the power they normally do. The first 30 minutes seemed to take a while to go by, but thankfully I had some good music going on the ipod (Disturbed's new album - Asylum) and it helped push me through it. Before I knew it, the first hour on the elliptical had flown by. I took a 3-5 minute break after the first hour to do some stretching to try to keep the IT Band loose. I also decided to eat a packed of "Gu" ... which is basically a sugary substance that provides much needed calories / boost of energy during these longer workouts.
After the short break, I hopped back on and started to chip away at the second hour. This portion of the workout actually went really well. I seemed to settle into a good rhythm on the elliptical with a speed of about 140 rpm and pace of ~ 11 min/mile. By this time the TV show that I was watching (CNN News) had started to repeat its stories. I think that I might be a specialist on Lybia, the union debate in Wisconsin and Charlie Sheen now since these seemed to be the stories that were on every 2 minutes. Before I knew it, the second hour of the workout had come to an end. Again, I took a quick break to stretch and hopped right back on. It wasn't until I was about 2:20 minutes in that I started to feel gassed.
I started to dig deep but was only able to gut it out for another 20 minutes, making my total workout 2 hrs 40 minutes. Going back to my elliptical to running equation, today's workout would have been the equivalent of 160 minutes = 16 mile run. Overall, I was pleased with how it went. Towards the end, I felt tired but I think it was the boredom that really seemed to get me at the end. Its tough to keep your mind in check for almost 3 hours because when there is nothing to focus on and the scenery doesn't change, all you think about is how tired you are / how bad your legs hurt. Overall, I was pleased with the workout. I wish I could have hit the three hour mark, but I am getting there. This was a huge improvement over last week and I think I am happy to say that I am finally over that cold / flu that I had.
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