DeLaWho? DeLaWhat? DeLaWhere?

Upon realizing that I could not find a stop watch and that afterschool practice may have commenced at the local high school tracks, I have delayed my time trials. Which, like Martha Stewart, is a good thing. I still have a couple of issues that I need to address. One: the pulled right hamstring that has been nagging me since a pick-up game of football about 4 or 5 weeks ago. Two: Poor running form that leads to lower back pain. Luckily, for me, at least one of these two is something that I can physically correct...poor form of course. I will have to wait out this hamstring pull. I have the tendency to run "top heavy", that is, I lean forward. Apparently, too much forward lean puts additional stress on one's lower back, shoulders, and neck. Luckily, there is a quick fix exercise that I found courtesy of runnersworld.com. Hopefully, with a little practice, I will be running with better form soon.

Back to the event at hand. Today, I chose to go for a leisurely run around the neighborhood. The run lasted about 15 to 20 minutes before my poor form and aching back cut off my run. I tried to implement the quick fix, but I was unable to maintain proper form for too long before poor running habits resurfaced. Since, I am using the blog to hold myself accountable, after my post-run cool down, naturally, I found myself at the computer attempting to manipulate mapquest to figure out how long my chosen neighborhood route was and what kind of pace I was running (by the way, if I was to guage my effort level, I would say it was approximately 50 to 60% of my maximum mile pace). Befuddled, I nearly broke out a ruler for scale and measured my route using the map on the screen. Luckily for me, my sister came in a told me about mapmyrun.com. Using the resources of google earth, you enter your starting point. Then mark your run by entering markers manually until you have accounted for your entire run. After, entering the end point of your run, the distance is calculated...and viola. Additionally, you can use the workout calculator to figure out your pace, average speed, and number of calories burned. For my 1.5 mile run, I had an average pace of 10 min/mile, an average speed of 6 miles per hour, and I burned a whopping 230 calories. This certainly was not a neckbreaking pace. In fact, it is approximately, 2 to 3 minutes off my desired pace for the 5-k. C'est la vie. I guess you could chalk it up as a baby step.

Labels: Running