Road to Health #11 - Push-Ups

I think it was about 20 years ago that someone put a thought in my brain - doing one's age in push-ups. What a great idea! And so I've been doing that.

It sounds overwhelming at first, but there's a cool web-site called Hundred Pushups which puts one on a program to achieve this goal (at least the goal of doing one's age) rather quickly. 

When I first started doing push-ups, I knew they were good for me, but I didn't know how good until I discovered this article: 'Push-up capacity linked with lower incidence of future cardiovascular disease events among men.'

Last year I thought it might be cool to do a video of myself doing my age in push-ups. Unfortunately, it was only then that I realized I was doing them incorrectly. I went through the program and got back up to my age in push-ups. So, around my birthday we did another video. Oh no!!! I was still doing them wrong! Okay. I know what the problem is now, so I'm back on the program. I'm now up to 50 correct push-ups. I should be back on track in a few weeks.

Road to Health #10 - Cancer Prevention

Ten years ago I was in the Twin Cities for a wedding. Since this forced me to miss a 5K I normally run, I decided to look for a race in the Cities that weekend. I discovered a beautiful location that ran all the way around a lake. The race was called Miles for Melanoma. 

I didn't actually do that well in the race, but afterward they were providing free screenings. What a great idea. I discovered that day that I needed to see a dermatologist as soon as possible. I had pre-cancerous skin lesions. I've been visiting my dermatologist religiously ever since.

Yellow Rose

The weather was perfect for the Yellow Rose today - sunny, low 60s, very little wind.

There were at least 200 runners today!

It was a good start. I didn't let my emotions get the best of me. I kept it to about a 10 min pace.

I pretty much ran exactly as planned: approx 10 min pace for the first mile, 9:45 for the second mile and 9:30 for the third mile. 

I waved at Phil and Marcia:

I'm getting close to the end:

Right near the end, a 71-year-old fellow from Roosevelt, Michael Palmquist, passed me! I couldn't let him beat me! I put it into another gear and probably beat him by a hundredth of a second.

I was happy to get back under 30 minutes. I was pleased with the negative splits. I don't think I could have done any better than I did - my max heart rate was 190! Unfortunately, I did not medal. I came in fourth place for the 60-69 men.