Some FAQ's Answered

Hi again! I can't believe how this has taken off. Guess there was a need for some sort of guided faculty fitness, but ultimately YOU are the ones who need to push yourselves on a daily basis. It's pretty easy to be fired up and put in decent mileage in the first week or 2, but once the summertime blues set in it will get tougher.

Today Gloria was telling me how sore she was after her first few workouts. First off, great job thus far Gloria! My advice to her was two things. First of all, you'll most likely stay sore for the first 2 weeks. Don't lose hope, you won't be sore forever! The 2 week mark tends to be the magic number, at least for the cross country kids at Malvern so maybe it will be for you as well. The second thing I told her was to develop a good stretching routine - before and/or after the workout. I did some searching for a good web site with pictures showing a decent stretching routine and lemme tell you the ones I found were L-A-M-E lame! Here is the best one I could find. Focus more on the lower body stretches but the upper body ones are fine as well. Oh, you can do the quadriceps stretch standing up as well.

http://exercise.about.com/cs/flexibility/l/blstretch.htm

Many of you have asked me if your spouses can participate in this challenge. Yes, your spouses can participate and I will be glad to help them any way I can. In fact, you can send me their mileage totals along with your's. The only thing they can't do is get a free t-shirt at the end of the challenge. Perhaps they can order one and buy it at cost through us if they want to. We'll figure all that stuff out at the end. For now, just get your mileage in!

I have had some questions about shoes for walking and running. I recommend going to a specialty running store because the folks who work there tend to be more familiar with walking and running and should be able to fit you to the optimal shoe based on your biomechanics. Off the top of my head here is a list of running stores in the area:

- Jenkintown Running Store, Jenkintown
- Bryn Mawr Running Store, Bryn Mawr (I used to train with these guys and the owner of the BMRS is Bob Schwelm who used to coach at Malvern)
- Chester County Running Store, West Chester (co-owned by Kevin Kelly who coaches at Henderson and Scott Purcell, a former high school teammate of mine)
- Runaway Success, Paoli
- Downingtown Running Store, Downingtown
- Delaware Running Company, Wilmington DE (if you mention my name here you might get a 20% discount or pay a 20% extra fee, depending on who waits on you. Only kidding.)

For those of you trying to lose weight, please weigh yourselves once per week in a controlled setting. If you feel comfortable then you can report your weight to me and I can help you track it but that's up to you. When you do your weekly weigh-in, choose a day and time of day and be consistent on each weigh-in. So if you choose Thursday morning, then EVERY weigh-in must be Thursday morning before breakfast. Weight can fluctuate up to +/- 5 lbs during each day so we need to have good numbers for an accurate progression.

One more thing -- How do you report your mileage to me? I'll send out a weekly e-mail reminding you to send your mileage from the past week and I'll add it in to the spreadsheet. Some of you have created accounts on maymyrun.com, and some of you have created accounts on google docs. I don't really understand the technology of either one of those applications but promise to look into them. It would be cool to have a place where we can all post stuff so that the whole group can follow our progress. Otherwise we can simply use the 'comments' section on this blog.

Happy exercise everyone and take care.