Milo Apex Season 7: Week 1 at a Glance

For the past few months, I have been slacking-off from blogging in general, and from joining races. Thankfully though, I haven't been a couch-potato during these times. I just feel that I need to allot and give more attention to training and stop doing races without training, or making the race itself as my training -- which all gives me frustrating results (like what happened in my recent races like the Merrell Adventure Run 4, World Vision Run 2013, 37th Milo Eliminations, and Safeguard-2XU Leg2).

I know I'm getting old, but I don't even want this age to be my excuse for not doing better on things that I know I can still be great about in my own way. So to turn the table around, I decided to get involve in Professional training (not just solely relying on one's experience and planting those experiences to other people) without the long-term contract and that which can motivate me to stay on track.

The first thing that came to my mind was a Running Clinic which I can attend to regularly, or get a Running Coach to personally train me.

Practically, it was still the Milo APEX Running School that is more suited to what I am looking for. The training is scientific, with knowledgeable and certified Coaches and Personal therapists, only costs a fraction than getting a personal trainer, lasts only about 3-months than enrolling on a gym, a closer location from the apartment, and workouts are varying with focus not just about running in general, but as well as on injury prevention, full body strength and conditioning, and also on recovery needs.

The training started last September 9 and is ongoing three times a week. With the knowledge and training that I'm getting, I felt the need to share our workouts and give people a glimpse of what we are doing. Although just reading our workout itineraries will not be enough (because at most, I cannot provide photos of each of our sessions, no illustrations of each workout may also be provided), this will at least serve as my reference guide in the future or as a reference for those doing at-home workouts.

So, here's a glance of the full first week for Season 7:

1st Day (Session #1):

The first day began with a fitness test workout (I wasn't able to take note of the warm-up and cooldown sessions) to check our current fitness level. I figured, this will be used as reference at the end of the season to see if we have improved.

Warmup Run:
2-km run from apartment to Quezon Memorial Circle

Fitness Test Workout:
Each workout will have to be done 1-minute each in one (1) complete circuit set.

1. Crunches
2. Push-ups
3. Squats
4. Mountain climber with push-ups
5. Single-leg kicking lunges with resistance band (30-sec each leg)
6. Triceps dip
7. Back-extensions
8. Alternating toe touches
9. Pelvic tilt
10. Plank

Finale:

• 2-km race pace going home
• Static stretching cooldown (20-counts per stretch)

2nd Day (Session #2):

Warmup Run:
2-km run from apartment to Quezon Memorial Circle

Warm-up Exercises:

1. Alternating toe touches
2. Round-the-clock lunges
3. Skip and kick
4. Shoulder rotation
5. Head rotations

Main Workout:
Like the first day, these workouts were done in 1-minute each for two (2) complete circuit set.

1. Theraband lateral lunge
2. TRX Suspension transverse lunges
3. Two-arms rope wave
4. Two-arms alternating rope wave
5. Medicine ball Russian twists/obliques
6. Forward in-out ladders
7. Sideward in-out ladders
8. Theraband deadlift-to-overhead-and-upper-back pull
9. Side lunges
10. Stability ball rollouts
11. Ladder high-knees

Run workout:

• 20-minutes relax pace run

Finale:

• 2-km race pace going home
• Static stretching cooldown (20-counts per stretch)

3rd Day (Session #3):

• Weekend LSD run

The usual weekend session (every Saturday) would be a long easy mileage run, and for this session, it was an LSD around UP Diliman area. I did not attend the LSD as I was with the PhilSky (Philippine SkyRunning Association) group for our Mt. Maculot Training Run -- which is a requirement for applicants like me. ;)