Fitness Friday

Man this week just flew by! I love short work weeks...bring on the weekend!

Sunday - 13 miles, easy pace. This was the best run! I ran with a couple of guys from my running group, on a new-to-us stretch of the bike trail. There was one killer hill, but overall it was a nice route. Good conversation on the way out, and then I turned back before them so I had a little "alone" time with my thoughts. I also tried out PowerGels for the first time. Pretty sweet, but not so bad. One of the guys said "just think of it as the filling in a jelly donut", and honestly - that really helped! They sat well with my stomach, so I think this might be a good alternative to the chews I used to eat pre-braces. Average pace: 9:43.

Monday - no fitness was to be had on Monday. Well, not true. I did hip strength and lower leg strength exercises. But besides that? Nada.

Tuesday - 5 mile cutdown run. 1 mile warm up, 3 miles at 8:55, 8:45, 8:35, 1 mile cool down. For some reason, I had trouble hitting the paces in those first two cutdown miles. I was way too fast, then slowed down too much, then had to catch up. It wasn't until that 8:35 mile that I finally leveled out and ran at a consistent pace. Overall though, it was a good run. Paces: 9:50, 8:52, 8:45, 8:34, 9:16.

Wednesday - I was totally going to get up and do yoga on Wednesday morning, but I went to see Pitch Perfect 2 on Tuesday night, and even though I wasn't out late I did have trouble falling asleep. Too hyped up from being out past 8:30pm? I don't know. So I opted for an extra hour of sleep. I did get in about 15 minutes of yoga in the evening, along with my core strength exercises.

Thursday - 4 easy miles. Nothing special about this run. The miles were easy, the weather was beautiful. Average pace: 9:40.

Friday - 5 easy miles. It was supposed to rain this morning, but the roads were dry when I left the house. I figured I'd just deal with it if I got rained on. But apparently my subconscious was worried about getting wet, because my first 2 miles were too fast. Once I told myself to stop being silly, 10 or 20 extra seconds was not actually going to get me home that much faster, I was able to slow down back to my easy range. Paces: 9:28, 9:32, 9:36, 9:48, 9:38

Saturday - tomorrow I plan on doing the circuit training routine, then I'm off to have lunch with a good, old friend. Not that she's old, just I've known her for a few years. Although she is quite a bit older than me. Uhm...I'm really not calling anyone old here. Moving on!

How's your training going? Do you use gels when you run?