Establishing A Base Of Fitness

This past week marked my third week of training for our event “5 Wonders Under 25 Minutes.” It was the first week that I ran 6 out of 7 days, even with 40 hours of coaching on the tennis court. It was a very solid week of establishing a base with my fitness level and working on my speed form. The weather was perfect this week in Sarasota –  70s during the day with low humidity and 50s at night. It does not get any better than that…

Monday: 5 miles easy followed by strength work.

Tuesday: 6 miles medium with the 10 seconds all out sprints up the steepest portion of the Ringling Bridge. Hurdles, medicine ball, and bands with Wayne.

Wednesday: 4 miles easy, stationary bike, core work, followed by a full body massage.

Thursday: Ran a  recovery 5 miles with the Sarasota High track team.

Friday: no running, but 8 hours of hitting tennis balls.

Saturday: 6 miles total with Wayne – my first all out 12 x 100 yard sprints working on my form and feel. Hurdles, medicine ball, and bands with various strength work.

Sunday: 5 miles recovery with 8 hours of tennis.

This coming week will be set up a little differently as we will be traveling to Orlando on Saturday the 26th for Disney’s Fit for a Princess Expo on behalf of my compression sock sponsor, Sigavris. I will be speaking about the value of graduated compression socks from Sigvaris (I heard that Sigvaris made a special purple Performance Sock for this women’s event). Please stop by the Sigvaris booth between 10-4 on Saturday at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. The half marathon takes place on Sunday.

Mid-week recovery helps


My second week of training had a small bump in the road, but overall it went well.

Monday began with a 6 mile run followed by strength and power training. On Tuesday, Wayne Johnson and I ran a 6 mile run with fartleks thrown in for two miles on the grassy grounds of GT Bray fields in Bradenton. After the final speed work, I felt my right knee was tender and I stretched it out after our medicine ball, band, and hurdle work.

However, I still felt a bit of pain on my easy run on Wednesday after my 8 hours on the tennis court. Fortunately, I had a massage with Stacie Nevelus on Wednesday evening. She was able to alleviate the referring pain to my right knee (as it was coming from my lateral quad), but on Thursday it was still not 100% yet. After my tennis and easy run on Thursday, I saw Dr. K (Kotlarczyk) at Wellness Concepts in Bradenton. He does various manual therapies (massage, PNF, laser, chiro etc.) and fully addressed the knee. I walked away from the therapy pain-free.

After a long day of tennis on Friday, I ran 6 miles on Saturday with 10 x 100 meters in 15 seconds each repetition. The pain was totally gone and my stride felt long and powerful.

The importance of recovery sessions during the week is vital to building a base of fitness in training over a 4-month period. The sooner you seek attention to any training ailment, the better chance you have to fix the problem.

Training Begins

I thought I would try something new this year before our 2011 event begins in May. I am going to share with you my weekly workout regime and then you can give me some feedback on the program.

My first week of training began with a 9 mile run on Siesta Key beach with Wayne Lee Johnson (he and I meet every Tuesday and Saturday for workouts). Sunday I did not run because I had 9 hours of tennis to teach on court.

Then, I ran 5 miles on Monday with my beautiful wife, Sekyen, followed by a full body strength endurance workout. Another 6 miles with Wayne on Tuesday followed by our 10-second sprints (all out) up the Ringling Bridge. We walk down the steepest portion of the bridge and then race up for 10 repetitions. We will be doing the bridge workout every other week.

Wednesday was another long 8 hour tennis day (this is the season) and I topped the day off with a massage by Stacie Nevelus in the evening. Thursday I met Sarasota High track coach, Kim Sheffield, and the distance track runners from Sarasota High at Payne Park (a city park with a 1/2 mile undulating, dirt track). I had a 2 mile tempo run with the 3 best male runners, Nick, David, and Courtland. The boys led the first mile in 5:55 and I led the second mile in 5:45. It was great to run with these students again.

Friday was a full body fitness day – strength training every part of my body with my new Body Protection program. So my 2011 training began with about 25 miles of running at various speeds and distances and a 40 hour work week on the tennis court. It feels good that my intense training has begun…