Blake Bennions running

Ran a couple miles and did as close to a monkey bar workout as I could on the swing set at the park, honestly it was probably harder/better. But there was dried bird crap or something on part of the top of the swingset, so that was really gross. I think I'll try to clean it off tomorrow.

I went home after that to wash my hands and got sick and threw up, unrelated to the bird poop I think. The rest of the run felt kind of meh and I took it easy, started feeling better towards the end. Did a couple strides at the end and then walked a mile with Becca and Whitney.

Ran a little over a 10k around the neighborhood. If I tack on all the extra loops in the neighborhood there's a 1.9 mile loop so I ran that 3 times plus some extra. Felt a little hot and humid, I averaged just over 7:00 and that felt a little quick at times. After the run I did a quarter mile at 9:00 pace at 10 degrees incline on the treadmill, twas pretty tough. I'll do that a few times a week and then start also adding 200m incline with sandbags for Spartan training. Final step will be jogging 200m with 80 pounds of sandbags for 200m at 10 degrees incline during a tempo run.

7 miles around the neighborhood and park, about 2.5 miles of it on grass. Felt okay, legs were a little tired from yesterday.

Been avoiding going outside due to the wildfire smoke this week, but decided at a certain point loss of fitness is equally bad. Tonight the AQI was down to 60-70s too so I thought it would be a good time to test it out with a 400m workout.

The air quality was pretty bad, I ended up turning around and heading home after 4 reps because I was coughing. The sky is a smoky haze covering the clouds from the wildfires up north. I guess Canada is the Midwests California.

On top of the bad air quality my legs also felt heavy tired and awkward today. No idea why except for bad sleep this week. It's Becca's first week back to work so I've been sleeping from about 1:30/2 to 7 this week. Trying to get to bed earlier but there's a lot to do in the day and I used to finishing whatever I don't get to during the day at night. Hopefully will eventually be getting to bed by 11/11:30 or even earlier. I've been tired this week but every day has been amazing , very grateful for my family.

Anyways yeah my legs didn't feel good, I hit 76 for the 4 400s and it didnt feel smooth. I'll chalk today up to lack of sleep and bad air quality. I think I'll do a treadmill run tomorrow to avoid the air quality. Grateful I invested in an upgraded air purifier earlier this year.

4.5 miles on the treadmill, still avoiding bad air quality. Started with half a mile at 12 degrees incline at 9 minute pace, ran most the rest of the run at mid-low 7 minute pace. I did another half mile of 12 degrees incline at the end with about a quarter mile of it at 7:30 pace and the rest at 9 minute pace. The 7:30 pace at 12 degrees incline was quite tough for me.

My core workout has been some yoga and then leg lifts, calf raises, figure eights, push ups, hip flexers, burpees, and pull ups. Now I'm adding lunges and squats. I do deadlift, dips, and squat jumps every now and then. For lifting throughout the week I do bent over rows, prone bench rows, deadlifts, 3 main shoulder lifts, shoulder press, curls, dumbbell bench.

Once we get a cable machine I'll add some more exercises. Sometimes I do tricep extensions but I'm leaning away from those because I feel like they add too much size to my arms and I need to lean down a bit. Once the cable machine is here I don't think I'll miss much standard gym equipment. In cedar city the retro fitness gym I would go to had a weighted jump machine and a continuous rope pull machine. Both really cool gym equipment machines I've never seen since.

No running, just lots of core. Still waiting for air quality to improve. I have a tendency to fixate on stuff like this. One of the perks of moving to Ohio for me was that the average AQI here is 24 and the average in Utah and Colorado is 30-33.

So unless you have a carbon filter air purifier the average pollution throughout the year is equivalent to smoking 3 cigarettes a week in Colorado/Utah vs 2 here in Ohio. One cigarette is equivalent to about 22 ug/m3 of p2.5 and am AQI is about 8 ug/m3 over 24 hours. AQI of 24 is about 5 ug/m3. That's still about 100 cigarettes in a year of damage to my lungs every year, which (along with risk of VOCs from our remodel) is why I bought the best heavy duty carbon filter air purifier so that I could reduce that to pretty much 0 at least when we're home. Don't want young Whitney to have any lung problems. My upgraded air purifier we got this spring is probably my most prized possession along with my adjustable dumbbells, those are amazing. With how much I've moved around the past few years I really don't have a lot of possessions I'm attatched to, but now I have this 50lb air purifier and 180lb for the two adjustable dumbbells that I will definitely take with me in any future move... I suppose lots of baby stuff too and thats before we get to Beccas stuff. Gone are the days everything I need in life easily fits in a sedan.

Anyways, I figure when you're doing an intense activity like running you're basically getting your full days worth of exposure to the bad air quality in about an hour (maybe that's extreme), which means that going on a run on a day like today where the AQI is over 100 would be the equivalent of smoking 2 cigarettes. Is a run as good for your lungs as 2 cigarettes are bad? Maybe I'll research that next, but I'm pretty sure that would be hard to compare. Its interesting to consider that even on an average air quality day, that line of thinking means that 30 miles of outdoor running would also come with negative pollution effects worth 2 cigerretes. I'm not sure why the EPA considers AQI of 50 perfectly safe... does that mean that smoking is perfectly fine as long as you limit yourself to under 200 cigerettes per year? At a certain point you just have to live your life and not worry about it, but it is a consideration for me.

I just hope the air quality improves quickly. Probably should have done a treadmill run today but my basement gets kind of stuffy if I don't open a window when I run...which would defeat the whole purpose of the treadmill.

Split the run in half because I didn't have a free block long enough to do the whole run. Felt a lot better for the 2nd half actually. Air quality is mostly back to normal so that's nice.

Didn't have much time for a run today so I ran fast and short, averaged 6:20 with mile 2 just under 6:00. I feel like I could run under 1:25 for a half marathon right now. Maybe I'll try that this weekend, give the shorter stuff a break. I think it's better to concentrate on building mileage right now anyways and then get back to track workouts a couple times a week once I'm used to 30-35mpw. I'll still do hard runs and get some running in at 800/mile/5k paces, but just as part of my long runs. Once I run a sub 1:20 half I think I'll sign up for a marathon and start doing some 16-20 mile runs a couple times a month.

Hopefully I never spend much time below 20 miles per week again, it's hard to get fast again after a few years of being a slouch, it amazes me that in 2020 summer I was able to pick up after a year and a half of very little running and get into low 17 minute shape in like a month or two. Now I've been slowly building back since March 2022 and I'm still not quite back there. What happened between the summer of 2020 and 2021? It seems like I used to be able to jump back into 17 minute shape with just a few weeks of good training and now it's taking forever to get there.

But now I am healthy and my achilles pretty much healed finally after 7 years, I'm enjoying my running injury free. So my slow and patient approach has paid off even if I don't feel like I'm in great shape yet. Things are just starting to pick up, I think I'm going to start seeing good returns these next few months once I'm averaging over 30 miles and am deep into my core/lifting revival as well.

Busy week, run the first 4 miles at current goal HM pace and then took the last half easier. Didn't feel as good as earlier this week. Felt kinda weak and tired.

I'm going to make a workout schedule and try my best to follow it.

Ran a little over a mile during our nightly stroll. I picked it up for the last quarter mile or so. My legs have been feeling heavy when I run fast. Probably just need to run more miles and include more strides and pick ups in my long runs.

Treadmill run today because the crappy air quality is back. I've had pretty bad luck with wildfires following me around the past few years. Between bad smoke from California the last summer I spent in Utah, the Boulder fire the month I moved to Denver, and now the first summer I'm in Columbus we're dealing with all this smoke from the giant wildfires in Canada. Probably won't be much better in future years as climate change issues aren't being given enough attention, and even if they were there's only so much people can do without major advances in clean energy. Easier to just blame the Canadians, screw those guys.

It is pretty interesting to consider the reaction the world had to covid vs climate change. Especially considering 5 million people died from "abnormal temperatures related to climate change" in 2021 according to a study I read. Over the past 3+ years covid has accounted for just under 7 million deaths, although I'm sure that would be much higher without social distancing and quick vaccines. But if you factor in all the illness caused by pollution and such, and the fact that all these effects are going to exponentially worsen... I guess it's more of a slow burn type of deal.

Anyways treadmill was okay, I did a mile of it at 12 degrees incline at 8:00 pace. Treadmill was making a weird sound towards the end, lie something was loose and banging around. Still running fine, I'll check it out tomorrow... probably better to become a treadmill repair expert sooner rather than later.

Still bad air quality but I didn't want to do a treadmill run and I wanted to get some sprints in. So I decided to warm up on the treadmill and then go out. I got 2 miles on the treadmill with 5 minutes at 12 degrees incline, it actually felt really good today so I think my legs are adjusting. Then I went outside and ran over the park/track area and did 6x200m building up from 5k pace to a sprint. I tried to do the first 59 meters at 5k pace, 2nd 50 at mile pace, 3rd 50 at 800m pace, and then all our sprint for the last 50.

The 200s felt hard, probably because of th air quality. The AQI was down to 65 when I went out but I was still coughing by the end of the workout. I did feel my form get smoother and feel less awkward as the reps went on.i did the last 2 reps on the grass, I think I might do them all on the grass next time, much easier on the feet and ankles.

I'm trying to do more injury preventative drills during my morning core/stretching. Today I tried doing clam shells, single leg deadlift, bird dogs, reverse lunges, and bridges. I should get a band to do some of these with. For my morning workout core/yoga time I have Whitney do tummy time and then just hang out on her blanket and practice hitting a bell toy that hangs down over her blanket. Daddy daughter workout time is one of the best parts of the day, hopefully a morning ritual that will last a long time.

Wanted to do 8 but got out of the house a little late and didn't quite have time. I had to pick it up a bit as it was and I didn't want today to be too hard, I'm pretty sore. I ran 2 of today's miles on the grass. I also walked 3-4 miles with Whitney today.

Ugh looking ahead at another bad week for air quality. Tomorrow looks to be the only good air quality day so I'll get in a good run.

Easy longer run during the day, so it was a little warm. I added 2 200m build ups on the grass. My back was hurting towards the end, I did a good back workout before my run so it probably had something to do with that.

Treadmill run because the air quality has been really bad this week. Hard to boost mileage when like 2/3rds of the days this month have had an AQI of 100+. It's okay, I've been adding more injury preventative drills and an extra month at 20-25 mpw isn't going to kill me. Hopefully the air quality in July is better.