Hi. Yes, I
fell off the running bandwagon again. Sort of. I’ve still been running,
occasionally, but work and school have been pretty much ruling my life.
Thankfully, I’ve been “hired in” at my part-time job (I was technically working
for a temp company August – mid January), which means I’ll have a steady
schedule I can schedule my life around. And have health insurance and days off.
Yay. Plus I added a new skill to my resume – forklift driving. Oh yea, I can
load freight in the semi trailers now. It’s kind of awesome. Haha.
Quickly, I
just want to touch on my fitness goals for the next couple months …
1. My 2nd
half marathon (The Glass City/ Owens Corning Half) is April 28th.
That’s less than 3 months away. And there are quite a few people I know (including my ex)
who are also running it. I have a training schedule written out (and adjusted
once already) that is similar to the once I used for the Boy Scout Half last
year. It worked well then, so I wanted to stick to something I was comfortable
with (for now). In a nutshell, my week looks like:
Cross-Training/
Rest/ 3 miles (trails, mostly)/ 4-6 miles (progressive)/ 3 miles (sustained
speed – mainly Thursday night group run)/ Rest/ Long Run
2. Be able
to hold a (modified – forearms and toes) plank for 5 minutes by the end of the
year. I’m doing this progressively, obviously. I plank at least once a day and
each week I add 5 seconds to my “goal time.” If I’m able to hold it longer than
my “goal time” for the week, I do. This week is 1 minute 5 seconds.
3. Tone up
my arms and upper body. I’ve been “researching” on Pinterest and have a couple
circuits I want to start doing consistently. I spent close to an hour Saturday
night printing them all off and organizing and evaluating them.
So … These
are all attainable, right? I tried to keep my goals simple to make it more
likely I’d stick to them. I want to update here at least once a week to just keep up to date on my progress and remind myself how far I've come.
Group run
this past Thursday was kind of my “coming back to running” kick in the pants.
It was bitterly cold and windy, but I was excited to get back to group and see
my “friends”. Now that I have Thursdays off work, I have no excuse to NOT go.
And running with all the faster people challenges me and pushes me to run
faster. Hehe. Since I hadn’t run in a while and it was SO windy, I decided I
was just going to be happy if I ran the whole 3 miles with an average pace of
11:00/ mile. When I finished and looked down at my Garmin, I was in shock. 3
miles in 0:30:39. That’s an
average pace of 10:12/ mile. The first 2 miles (with a headwind) were around
10:30 and the third was 9:36. Holy cow. I’m not quite sure if my legs just
remembered what speed feels like or I was so cold that my body didn’t realize
how hard I was pushing. Haha.
My long(er)
run yesterday almost got sabotaged by the snow. I love running in snow, I
really do, but I saw the condition the roads were in when I drove over to feed
my friends’ cat (they’re out of town for the weekend) and I was actually scared
to run on the roads. The municipalities really hadn’t anticipated that much
snow and the snow plows were slow to react. My “saving grace” (as mom put it)
was the “dreadmill”. 7 miles in our basement with just my iPod, staring at the
wall. Oh, and did I mention the hot air vent directly above me blowing (what
felt like) 80* air on me. Yea, it was miserable. But I got it done. And I was
proud of myself afterwards. Every couple minutes I was mentally calculating how
early I could quit without feeling like a failure and then a rocking song would
come up on my playlist and I’d be rejuvenated. As usual, my pace on the treadmill
is slower than what I normally run (still can’t figure that one out), but the
mileage got done.
Alright, I’m
off to get ready for work. We moved up our shift time for this evening to accommodate
those who want to be home in time to watch the Super Bowl. As much as I love
football, if I get the chance to stay later and get some more time on this paycheck,
I’m going to take it.
