Fitness Friday

Happy Friday!

I was greeted by the makings of a pretty sunrise at the end of my run this morning:

The street lights are still on, but the sun was starting to peek up. Pretty soon I won't need my headlamp on my early morning runs!

With my parents here for a week, getting my workouts in was a little challenging. The diet train went completely off the rails and I'm still paying for it. But let's see how things stacked up.

Sun March 29th - as predicted, the weather was crappy so I ran on the treadmill. Boring.

Tues, March 31st - Hills. 1 mile warm up, then 4 laps of this repeat: 30 sec uphill at 1 mile pace (6:50), 30 sec rest downhill, 75 sec uphill at 5K pace (7:50-8:00), walk down rest. 1 mile cool down. I messed this up right from the get-go with jogging down the hill for what was supposed to be the walking rest. Oh well. My 1 mile pace is closer to 7:10, so that 6:50 was shooting high. I managed some 7:15-7:20 paces, but mostly hit this around 7:50. I was ok with that though.

Thurs, April 2nd - easy 5 on the treadmill. This was supposed to be a 6 mile cutdown run, but with my parents arriving so late, then Emily getting sick that morning...the cutdown wasn't happening. I was lucky to get this in!

Friday, April 3rd - 6 mile cutdown: 1 mile warm up, followed by 1 mile each at 8:55, 8:45, 8:35, 8:25, no rest. 1 mile cool down. I really enjoyed this run! It was challenging, but comfortable. It was also nice to stretch my legs a bit. My paces were 8:53, 8:46, 8:34, 8:25. I feel like I knocked this one out of the ballpark!

Sun, April 5th - easy 10 miles. I slowed this down even though I was in a hurry to get the day started for Easter. But it was a nice run, and I still felt like I had gas in the tank.

Tues, April 7th - Tempo Intervals: 1 mile warm up, 4 x 800m at 8:00 with 45 sec rest, 1 mile cool down. This was surprisingly easy too. My first 2 intervals were too fast at 7:40 and 7:51, but then I was able to slow down a bit at 8:01 and 8:00. A friend of mine joined me at the track for this workout, which was really nice both in getting to see here and having someone to run with. I followed this up with a prescribed leg circuit workout.

Thurs, April 9 & Fri, April 10th - easy 5 miles, both days. Nothing really to report here, except my legs are pretty tired from the leg circuit I did on Tuesday. It had some lateral lunges and sideways lunge shuffles that really worked my glutes and inner thighs. Surprisingly, those areas are still sore!

I have 11 miles on tap for Sunday, and circuit training tomorrow. I may skip the circuit training to give my legs a true rest. Except I have to do laundry, go grocery shopping, and clean. So "rest" is a little deceiving here.

Despite my tired legs today, I feel like training is going well so far! I do feel like I'm getting stronger, and I'm really starting to enjoy the easy runs. Did I really just say that? Enjoy going slow?

How's your training going?