The gym was packed. On a Saturday morning. It was crazy. Although the gym is really fancy and they do have a lot of nice amenities, they really pack things into the space that they have, which doesn't make it that much nicer in my mind. We found treadmills in the weight lifting area that weren't as busy as the rest of the cardio area.
When we got on the treadmills, Drew said "I never really do any of these programs on here, maybe I'll do one of those today." Meaning these programs (sorry for the bad cell phone picture):
So, I never really do these programs on the treadmill either. I normally just press Quick Start, put the incline up to 1% and adjust my speed as needed. I figure if Drew could do one of these programs, I could too. I chose one of the Cross Country programs and started running. This is what my course looked like:
OK, so in the picture, it doesn't look that bad. It was really hard. It was also practically impossible to run quickly (as you can see from my 5.0 speed in the picture). I really wanted to quit after a mile. And by quit, I don't mean stop running, I just didn't want to do this dumb program anymore. But I did it anyway. I slogged it out for an hour (the limit on the treadmill) and I definitely had to walk more than once and even on the parts I was running, unless it was flat or close to it, I was pretty slow. I figured that was okay. I decided that it wasn't going to be the end of the world if I ran slowly uphill. I need the hill practice anyway and I might as well try it out on the treadmill.
It also made me realize as I was running that I have no idea what the terrain of my half-marathon is like in Atlanta and maybe I should research that a little bit. I mean, there probably isn't any point in practicing hills if there aren't any on the course, right? (I'm totally kidding, by the way, I realize that there is value in hill running no matter what).
After my hour expired, I still needed to run at least 6 miles and I wasn't quite there yet, so I did another 0.80 miles on 0% incline. I'm not gonna lie. I started out at 1% and decided after about 30 seconds that I had done enough incline work for the day and 0% was probably okay for 0.80 miles!
I guess I should also now mention that I technically did Sunday's workout on Saturday. I'm really bad at following this plan, huh? The reasoning was that I'm hoping to run tomorrow and go to Terrier swim practice and I thought I'd be a lot more likely to go swimming if I made Saturday my longer run day and Sunday a shorter run. So, at least I screwed up the plan on purpose today!
After the running was done, I met Drew on one of the basketball courts at the gym and we shot a couple hoops. I was really rusty, but I think he thought that I was okay for a girl. We shot around for about 10 minutes and then headed to the locker room to change out of our sweaty clothes so that we could try out one of the classes that the club offered.
We decided to try the Athletic Stretching class. It was an hour-long class that incorporated some yoga moves with some regular stretches. Some of them were really hard (mainly because I'm not the most flexible person in the world), but I left the class feeling pretty good overall. I'm really glad that we did the class and I think something like that could be really beneficial on a weekly basis. So, maybe that means I should really start going to yoga instead of just saying that I'd like to start going to yoga.
Run #1
Time: 60:00
Distance: 5.20 miles
Pace: 11:32/mile
Calories: 650 (according to treadmill)
Run #2
Time: 7:53
Distance: 0.80 miles
Pace: 9:51/mile
Calories: 98 (according to treadmill)
I haven't tried any of those treadmill programs either. I don't think I want to! Haha. I was super-excited on Friday to find out that there are actually some treadmills at my gym with a 99 minute limit instead of the usual 60. Woohoo!
ReplyDelete