After my trainer dressed me down a bit Friday night, he says he wants me to go running with him and an Olympic sprinter in-training the following morning at 8:30 AM.
I left the conversation a little put off and decided to have my last undisciplined night for the next 6 weeks of “camp.” My wife & son are out of town so I went to a little sushi place a short walk from home. Had some spicy tuna rolls and more importantly, 2 pints of beer. On the walk home I’m thirsty as hell, so pick up a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke and down the whole caffiene infused bottle.
That night it rains hard all night. I know this sounds sounds lame, especially since I’m an ex-East Coaster, but I’m not used to the noise of it raining really hard at night so I can’t sleep. Oddly enough all my running partners had the exact same issue. I admit it, Southern California makes you soft. Anyway combine the rain with the alcohol and Diet Coke and I only put in 2-3 hours of sleep before the run.
The trainer that organizes runs is old school, he worships boxers that used to run 14 miles/day and box 20 rounds or whatever the hell they did, so I knew he’d abuse us. The original plan was jogging a warm up mile, 2 miles of light-then-medium jogging intervals, then 30 all out sprint job intervals. They sprint the straight aways of a quarter mile track and jog the turns, which means 15 laps, or 3.75 miles of sprints completed after another 3 miles of jogging. 6.75 miles, come on!!!
So we do the warm-up mile and light-then-medium jog intervals completing the first 3 miles. It’s not as bad as I thought, we stopped to stretch between the warm-up mile and the other 2 and I usually run my 3 miles faster, so I’m feeling fine. But then again here comes the sprints.
Then it starts hammering down rain. I swear I wasn’t the person complaining, but one of the non-boxing sprinters is worried about getting sick. So we go into a nearby parking garage and do as best we can our sprint work. Garage starts to fill and we cut it short after a mile by our count. Not as bad as planned, but still 4 miles total.
I’m stepping it up, so I take a nap, then go to the gym for some bag work. Next morning (Sunday) I do a 3 mile run on my own and later in the day do some more bag work. With my bag work I’m focusing on upping my punch output. I either shoot for 3 fast 300 punch rounds, or do 3 rounds of 30 second power punch intervals.
