Getting In Shape

After running for the first time, I realized how long it had actually been since I had ran. The last time was in November shortly before my high school team was eliminated in the region finals. However, I realized that I had only lost about one minute on my two mile, which I didn't consider to be too bad. I had my first outdoor, and i quickly figured that just because my two mile hadn't quite lost its sting, my "soccer conditioning" was no where near where it should be. After only 30 minutes of scrimmaging, I found myslef clutching my kness, bent over, and gasping for breath. There is a significant difference betweem being in good distance shape and being in soccer shape. The game of soccer requires constant shifting back and forth between sprinting and jogging for two 45 minute halves. This requires a different kind of conditioning that is almost impossible to achieve unless you are actually playing games consistently. So, no matter what I do, I am fearful that I won't be in "game shape" until after getting several games under my belt. As far as my weight lifting was concerned, I was still slowly improving (gaining about 5 pounds on my bench MAX every 2-3 weeks). There is only one thing that was bothering me and that was there are too many days that I was not able to lift because of various situations. Some these were assemblys, snow days, and pointless surveys that required us to miss class. I feel like if there were not so many distractions that caused me to miss class, I could be consistently improving 5 pounds on my MAX every 2 weeks, instead of it sometimes taking 3 weeks. If this were the case, then I could actually surpass my goal by five pounds by the end of the semester. At the the rate I am going right now, I will prolly fall 5-10 pounds short of my 185 pound goal I set at the beginning of the semester. This means that I am going to have to work a little harder to make sure that I can acheive both my goals of being cardiovascularly and muscularly in shape...