I'm 40% short of "good"

With an emphasis on "hard"

Today's workout (core and strength training): 20 minutes

I'm being tortured again by the beautiful weather. Just going outside to put up a new clock in the pool area has me itching to go out for a run. It's sunny, 64° with 54% humidity today. Maybe I'll allow myself a very easy bike ride later.

This morning I ran through my standard set of core exercises and added some other elements. I never feel like I work hard enough after completing a core session even though I add more repetitions than what's specified in my instructions. I started reading the current issue of TrailRunner magazine and saw an article about improving your strength-to-weight ratio. The article includes a chart that lists the amount of push-ups that a person should be able to do based on their gender and age.

The ideal core strength-to-weight ratio (CSSWR) is 4 (or below) with 4+ to 8 categorized as "adequate." I missed the ideal by quite a bit and while I got close to doing 20 push-ups I'm still about 40% short of being "good." I'm guessing that these categories are based on tuned, not recreational, athletes like me. But I like a challenge and now that I have a benchmark I'll see how well I progress against this index.

Tomorrow I'm running the NHP 8K for the third consecutive year and I go into it feeling relatively ready. I'm planning on wearing the Hattori's for the first time in a race and that will be interesting. In terms of performance I'm hoping that I'll beat my prior time but I'll be happy just as long as I enjoy the experience.