If lifting weights is important to you, check out a Fitness Buddy. It takes your 1 rep max for each of your 5 favorite exercises and tells you how much weight to lift and how many reps and sets to do for a month. It suggests that you will get about 8 percent stronger each month if you are new to weightlifting. And thats about what it did for me. It does cost money. I think last year I paid about 50 dollars. But its a one time cost and is mine forever. But now I have a hard time finding enough time to lift 3 days a week, along with training for swimmnig, biking and running. And lifting makes me sore, And I dont want to run on sore muscles. If one rep max is too dangerous for you, it will calcualte what your one max weight is if you can lift a lower weight for 3 reps.

a moose?!?! that's soo cool!! (ok maybe not cool for you but for me over here in the mid-east it's very cool!) I do three sets of everything. Max rep of 10 on the first. To 10 or fatigue on the last two. I lift the same weight for two weeks then add a little more if the last round felt easy (aka if I max out all 3 sets). Do well with the upper. Have trouble fitting lower in because I don't want to run on tired legs. because i like to only ask one question at a time I erased the question that was here in honor of a immediately more important one!! I'm going for 12 tomorrow. Do I need to bring water and a snack? I haven't carried water ever and with doing long runs mostly by myself since december I don't even stop for water. But i've never done 12 so I donno if I need to bring water or if i'll need a snack?? (part of this worry comes from me running with a lady from this thread for the first time - 1st meeting too - so i'm worried she will be annoyed if I stop at a water fountain if I need to. I'm nervous about the meeting.)

I do 3 sets, 12-15 reps. I go till fatigue. I think it's like everything else where there is a fine line between stressing your muscles to improve and not injuring yourself. He said to do 85% of your max, and I'm light there. I've never figured out when in the schedule to put the weight lifting. On an easy day? Cash, will my fitness buddy lift the weights for me? Shan, some advice. Take water or energy drink for every run over 8 miles. Not that you might be fine going without, but you are adding miles, putting additional stress on your body. Most important right now is too stay healthy. Meaning, drink plenty of fluids, eat healthy, take a nap if needed, etc.. Trust me, these little things have a way of catching up with us. Also good to start icing down the legs after some of those longer runs. For my first marathon I wrapped my legs in ice packs frequently, just as prevention, and think it really helped. Ice is your friend. Smart to get on the TM. Can't run on that ice. Hope you have a melt down. Erika, I've been doing situps and pushups. I really need to buy some DVDs, find a good class, or something to mix life up, because I'm in a rut for core work. Oh I feel good today which I credit for change in diet.

Bugs, if you're able to do up to 15 reps for 3 sets... I think you need to up your weight. Just my .02 worth. Shan, I don't carry water or snacks for a 12 miler. If it's really hot (shut up, Cash), in the past I've carried a bottle of water, taken a sip, leave it, then pick it up on the way back (I do a lot of out-and-backs). This way, I get my drinks but don't need to carry the bottle the whole way. Fuel belts drive me nuts, can't stand to have anything "on" me. Otherwise, have a good drink before you go (about 20 minutes to let it settle), and a good drink when you get back and you should be fine. Have fun! "Rest" day for me, but not sure yet what that means.

Shan, glad to hear you got out there in that great weather as well. Cold and rainy and 6 miles for me. With all the rain and about 39F, I actually did it in shorts to avoid running in soaked running pants. As far as your shoes, I'd retire them just because of their age even if the mileage was low, especially if you think you're legs feel worse than your other shoes. Shoes are cheap. Knees, not so much. I had a pretty low mileage week with only two runs. I'm going to get one more in tomorrow but I'll come in under 20 miles after going over 30 for about 4 straight. Couldn't get out of the office at all and didn't run at night. I'm hoping next week will be better.

Notes from Sheldon, a professional triathlete and certified triathlon coach on nutrition. I'm gonna start with nutrition. It's one of my favorite issues and it really can make the biggest difference in a race. Eat to much and you go into gastric shut down, eat to little and your body won't have the fuel it needs. Going back to basic anatomy we have the aerobic system and the anaerobic system. We have glycolisis and glycogenolysis. Add water and you have tha making of a well fuel athlete. of course you burn fats and proteins and those need to be replaced. BASICALLY the body uses fuel in this direction. glucose -> glycogen -> amino acids or proteins -> fats. It's not a direct line, but it's close enough for an understanding of what you need to do in order to refuel properly. Before I go any further I would like to say that if you do enough research you can find any answer you want. If you want to find someone to say that you need to eat only fat to do well, search hard enough and you will find that person. I am giving the info as I see it in terms of an athlete. We all know that what we need is calories. So we count the calories in each little Gu packet and then guess at how long we will be out and figure out how many of those nasty little buggers we need. Basing the energy requirements on calorie cout willl probalby get you through the race, but how and when you get those calories is more important if you want to finish strong. A quick story: I'm at mile 50ish of IM Wisconsin and they have the special needs bags out on the road. I had a nifty plan for my calories and my special needs bag was very light. A couple gels, some Sweettarts and the ever present bag of Peanut M+M's and that was about it. I grab my bag, empty it and ride on. I had been ttrading places with anoither guy for about 30 miles and he hit the special needs bag at the same time. His bag was HUGE. He had no less than 5 PB+J sandwiches in there. I had to ask him if he planned on eating all of them. he simply said yup and rode away. I never saw him again. The point to my story was that he had a plan and I had a plan, both plans were very different. My plan was zero solids, his was 5 sandwiches on the bike. The average athlete can go a pretty long way without eating and for shorter races, food prbalby won't even get into the system before your done with the race. it's the endurance athlete that needs to worry about RACE nutrition. How, what and when. We have all heard the wall in a marathon is at the 20 mile point. The rational behind it is very simple. the body has ~2000 available calories. The average athlete burns about 100 calories per mile. You can do the math. If your running 26.2, you need to refuel your body. You need that extra 620 calories. This is just a generalization. We all know the guy that has one sip of water and no food during a marathon and is just fine. This is why their are 8 million different companies that make gels and food, they know we need it and want it. They want you to want their product more than the others. Now we know what it takes to run a marathon, what about a century ride? Simple. The rule says 4:1 miles on the bike to running. So at mile 80, your empty and need 500 more calories to complete the ride. Again, we all know the guy that starts a double century with a 20oz bottle of Gatorade and only drinks half of it. 250 calories and hour is the magic number. Eat 250 calories/hour and your gonna have the race of your life. Believe that? I have some great land 2 miles east of my house. Right on the water, OK it's about a mile into the water, but you have a great view. 250 calories is a start point. You start at that point and see what you can get in first. It's not very useful to carry 400 calories an hour if you can only eat 150. So how do we make sence of all this wonderful knowledge and how do we tie it into training and racing? I'm going home. I'll finish this wonderful novel at later time.

Shan, don't worry about your partner if you have to stop at a drinking fountain. Guess what most runners have to stop at the water tables during the race. I can't think of any runner that will be upset at having to stop for 30 seconds while their friend drinks water. Heck on a 12 mile I would not be suprised or upset if they needed a potty stop. Of course I run by the beach and there are public restrooms every half mile or less. Its nice to have a running friend, but often they flake out after they do their race and yours hasnt happened yet. So unless you run the same pace and are doing the same race, don't be surpised if they flake on you.

Oh man, what a week. Cold "snap" (I prefer to call it a cold bitch slap to the nuts) hit Edmonton. Sundays run was -27ºC/-16ºF with a 20mph wind (-43ºC/-45ºF wind chill) so we cut the 16k to 8k due to frostbite. Monday my car turned into a giant block of ice (fuel line froze while driving it) so my run was a 15 block survival run to shelter (-35ºC/-31ºF that day with a -46ºC/-50ºF wind chill roughly). Glad I had my running shoes with me. Tuesday, I hid inside from the cold. Wednesday, still car-less, I ran the 10.5k to work in -32ºC/-25ºF. Honestly, it was an awesome run and a great accomplishment to run across Edmonton to work. However fielding the, "are you crazy" questions all day got rather annoying. And trying to justify to people that I am only mildly crazy (ok, really...a little off my rocker...whatever.) Thursday - Hard 6k run. -28ºC/-18ºF but it was hard to breathe. My tounge kept freezing and I made the mistake of putting my keys in my mouth and lost a layer of my lip trying to get them off (yea, I'm an idiot.) Friday - off Saturday - Just got back from a 13k speed workout. -27ºC/-16ºF outside and I end up looking somewhat like an Irish Santa Claus by the end and ice forms INSIDE your jacket. It's great. Good run. Cut my lap times by 15 second even in the crappy footing. Overall a hellish week (car is still frozen) - but an ounce of determination goes a long way. (At least that's what my trainer tells me...) But it's going to warm up to -11ºC/12ºF on Tuesday! HEAT WAVE! Hope everyone else's week went well!