The Big Sign-Up

I'm signed up! For a MARATHON! In 15 weeks! Eek!!

In other news, the Ab Challenge continues, although I'm still counting down the days until it's over. I'm pretty proud of sticking with it.

Now I just hope I can find a good marathon training plan and stick with that!

A Recovery Run

After the big trial run yesterday, Drew and I went home, showered and then headed to New Jersey. My dad got a new job and will be moving from New Jersey to Georgia, so we went out there to hang out with him (probably for the last time in a while) before he moves! After a leisurely lunch out, we all headed back to their house and spent a good part of the afternoon and evening disassembling and packing up Legos.

Now might be a good time to explain that my dad is a Legomaniac. I'm not really sure that does it justice, but the jist of it is that his basement was filled with Lego Land and it all had to be taken down before the movers came. So, we spent our time filling up Ziploc bags with all the Legos! This was test #1 for my legs -- standing on a concrete floor for several hours.

These pictures don't really do it justice as I realized I should take some photos after we had already been working for over an hour and lots of stuff was already bagged up!



Last night Drew as we were about to head off to bed, Drew reminded me that I hadn't yet done the Ab Challenge for the day. Instead of just giving up and ignoring it, I actually did 5 continuous minutes of ab exercises while laying on the bed. Maybe that doesn't count 100%, but it was still hard. I did crunches, crunches on both sides, leg raises and some Pilates 100s. Then it was time for bed!

This morning, Drew and I slept in, which is really rare for us. I'm a really good sleeper, but he normally gets up and going a lot earlier than I'd like to, so it was a nice treat to sleep in until 9:30. We got up and ate a little something and then donned our running gear.

Drew had been wanting me to show him for some time now the strides and drills we do at Terrier on Tuesday mornings. So, today seemed like just as good of a day as any other, so we did all sorts of funny drills back and forth in front of my dad's house. I'm pretty sure that my dad and step-mom got a good chuckle out of watching us doing some of them!

After doing the typical Terrier warm-up, we headed off on a slow recovery run for me (test #2 for my legs). I felt like I was running a bit faster than I would have wanted, but looking at the times, I guess it was about right on. I actually think that part of the issue was the fact that we didn't start running until after 10 AM and that's not always the best idea in the summer around these parts. I was definitely getting a headache at the end and did some walking as well.

My legs actually felt pretty great. I was pleasantly surprised. I did wear my compression sleeves overnight and then while we were running just as a precaution, but I honestly felt great. Which means ... I'm pretty sure I'm solidly a YES for the Philadelphia Marathon! Of course, I still have to sign up. Crazy, I know. Even crazier, I'm getting all nervous about picking the right training plan. I don't want to give up entirely on biking and swimming, but I also want to make sure I am doing enough running miles.

Anyone have any suggestions on what plan to use?

Running
Time: 30:00
Distance: 2.75 miles
Pace: 10:54/mile

2 Push-Ups And A Plank

Thursday was a bit of a disaster. I was going to get up and go to the Terrier brick, but right at the last possible second where I could get out of bed and make it on time, there was a huge thunderclap that sent me back under the covers. Of course, I then ended up working late, so I just went straight home after work. Drew made dinner for us and then we did the Ab Challenge together.

We did the same thing where there were two stations and one person used the Swiss Ball and the other did body-weight exercises. On the first round, Drew used the ball and I did the body-weight stuff. I did two push-ups and then decided I didn't really want to do push-ups, so I did a plank instead. Since he was going to do the same thing as me, he asked if that was really what he was supposed to do, two push-ups and a plank? I thought it worked fine. I don't know what he was complaining about.

A lot of the Swiss Ball exercises have you hold them for a count of 5. Drew is a really fast counter, which I think is a little bit of cheating. But, it'll be his loss at the end of this whole experiment! I can't believe it's already been over a week since I started and even more unbelievably, I can't believe I've done it every day.

Of course, in full disclosure, we did go and get ice cream after the Ab Challenge last night. I'm not sure if is the point of the Ab Challenge or not, but it seemed like it was probably a wash. We both got fat free, after all!

This morning I took the lazy route again (but I did do the Ab Challenge). Mainly because I have big plans for Saturday morning. The big plans? A long run. Why, you may ask? Oh, because a woman I work with is trying to talk me into doing the Philadelphia Marathon with her! I haven't decided yet. I'm 15 weeks away from the race, so it seems like it should be plenty of time to get into marathon shape. I'd actually been thinking that after giving up on Timberman, this would be a good year to run a marathon, so this might be the push I needed.

Also, truthfully, I'm a person who needs to be scared into working out. Otherwise I'm all too happy to stay in bed and sleep the morning away. I need to have something looming on the horizon and a marathon would certainly do that. The point of this long run is to see how I feel and then make up my mind all the way. I'd say that I've got a foot firmly planted in the "yes" camp and a foot firmly planted in the "maybe" camp. This run will sort-of decide which way I end up leaning.

Running For Free

Last night I dragged my feet on the Ab Challenge, but I'm happy to report that I stuck with it and did the full 15 minutes that were part of the Challenge. I'm not sure I'm in love with this Challenge, but that's probably why it's called a Challenge!

This morning was the usual Terrier run. They sent us an e-mail last night saying that we should all wear our Terrier gear as they had arranged for us to get some free Shot Bloks and Clif Bars and they wanted send a photo of all us in our gear as a Thank You! I wore my Terrier short-sleeved shirt in order to support the team.

I ran from the bottom of the Park to the meeting spot since I thought I might be running a little bit late (I didn't wear a watch today). Turns out that I had plenty of time, but it was a nice little run anyway. I thought that we'd take a photo at the beginning of the run, but it turned out that they wanted to take the photo at the end. We did our normal drills and strides and then ran around to the S.

Today's workout was a speed/interval workout. It was 2 x 800 / 2 x 600 / 2 x 400 / 2 x 200 meters. The rest intervals were descending as the running intervals got shorter. I knew that I wasn't going to stay the whole time today because I wanted to get home in time to do the Ab Challenge this morning before I had to get ready for work.

Before I switched into my new shoes, I had noticed some shin pain in my left leg. I thought that over the weekend it had gone away, but today it was back. I figured that was another good reason to cut the workout short. I ended up doing 2 x 600 and 2 x 200, so not a whole lot, but an extra mile to the day.

I got home and was able to do 20 minutes of Ab Challenge before hopping in the shower. I'm surprised that it's 6 days in already! I had to re-inflate the Swiss Ball a little bit more this morning as it was starting to lose some of the air, but that was easy enough. I'm getting a little bit bored with some of the normal exercises, so I threw in some others today. I also did a Pilates 100 while holding the ball in between my legs (up in the air). Boy, that was hard!

All in all, a pretty good morning. I think I only ended up doing 3 miles of running today plus strides. I think that tomorrow I'm going to head to the gymnasium with Drew so that I can do some foam rolling at the end of the workout on my shin. Hopefully that will help with whatever this pain is!

Running
Distance: ~3.50 miles

A Tight Spot

Today ended up being a lazy day in our apartment. The weather wasn't looking so great, although I'm not really sure that it did ever end up raining, but the threat of it was enough to keep us mostly indoors with one trip outside for some grocery shopping at Whole Foods. As a result of the weather and our laziness today, we didn't end up doing any cardio.

I still had my Ab Challenge to follow through on and I asked Drew if he'd want to do it with me. He didn't seem overly excited, but he agreed. I told him that we'd do 15 minutes of exercises. Since there are two of us and only one Swiss Ball, we set-up two "stations" for exercising. One person would use the Swiss Ball and the other person would do some body-weight exercise of their choosing (push-ups / sit-ups / crunches / squats).

It's sort-of impossible to explain how ridiculous this is in a New York City apartment. One "station" is a yoga mat positioned between the coffee table and the TV. The other "station" is an exercise mat positioned between the dining room table and the computer desk. And, frankly, calling it a dining room table would sort-of indicate that we have a dining room when that really isn't the case at all.

Really, the only way to do this justice at all is to show you photos (and the lighting in our apartment is ridiculously bad).

The top of this photo is where our TV resides and the bottom of this photo is the coffee table, which is next to the couch. You can see that there is a lot of space for Swiss Ball exercises here:


And, then, here's the other "station". That's the computer desk chair on the left and our mess surrounding the dining table (that's more of a place to set things down than a table used for dining) on the right:


Basically, the point is that at moment, one of us could have kicked the other in the head without any trouble at all. It's fairly ridiculous and we actually have a decent-sized apartment! I actually had fun doing this with Drew, although I'm not sure that he thought it was fun. It made me feel better that even on this lazy Sunday, I still stuck with the challenge and did the work!

No Passing People!

This morning Drew was going to head off to his trainer, Billy's, boot-camp Park class. I decided that I'd go with Drew to drop him off at the class, but that I didn't want to participate. I'd really rather just go running instead and do my own Ab Challenge!

Drew and I ran most of the way up to the meeting spot where he'd meet everyone else. I had to stop to adjust my laces a couple of times. I finally am forcing myself to wear my new shoes and to get the speed laces adjusted properly so it'll be smooth sailing from here on out. I actually had to throw my old shoes away (I know, I should have recycled them), but I knew if I kept them lying around, I'd be too tempted to keep wearing them.

After I left Drew, I did some more fine tuning on the laces and I think now I've got it "just right". Hopefully they'll be all set now for many miles to come! Today's weather was much nicer than it had been recently, but, I have to say, it's still hot out there when you're running. At least it doesn't feel like you're running through water, but it's definitely not cool. I'm wondering if I'm more of a cold weather runner? Maybe I should become a warm-weather biker?

I started my run off by running one loop around the Reservoir. I tried to keep it slow and "conversational", which isn't all that easy when you're running by yourself. I just kept checking my heart rate and tried to keep it under 180. The easiest way to keep things conversational is to have a song stuck in your head, I think.

Before we left this morning, we were watching "Jersey Shore" (embarrassing fact #1). They played the smallest clip of Enrique Iglesias' new song "I Like It", which promptly got stuck in my head for the rest of the day and in order to get it out, I had to download it when I got home (embarrassing fact #2). Also, is it just me, or does Enrique look younger now than he did before?

When I wasn't repeating the lyrics to "I Like It" in my head, I kept telling myself not to pass people, which turns out was harder than I thought it would be. I don't really think that I'm all that competitive, but it was easy to pick people off, especially on the Reservoir Path. I just kept thinking that I was normally a faster runner than the people that were passing me.

The only great thing about this slow heart rate running? I honestly felt like I could run forever. Maybe my new shoes had something to do with that too, but I felt awesome. After running around the Reservoir, I ran back South to Columbus Circle along the East Side. I saw Drew and Billy's class doing their normal warm-up stuff. Billy saw me and waved, but Drew wasn't paying attention, I guess! They were doing squats when I ran past. Which didn't really seem like all that much fun. I have to say that I wasn't all that sorry that I missed the class!

After I got home, I watched some TV and was really hungry (but was waiting for Drew to get home with groceries) so I fell asleep on the couch until he got home. Once we had eaten, then I got my act together and did today's Ab Challenge. I did 15 minutes of exercises, including some new ones (to me). I put a yoga mat down on the rug today and it was a lot easier to do everything since it wasn't as slippery as the rug has been!

Running
Time: 53:42
Distance: 5.10 miles
Pace: 10:31/mile

Making Time

This morning I had set my alarm for 5:30, but I didn't feel like getting up and doing anything. It was only after that I realized that I should have gotten up and fiddled with my new shoes to get the laces all properly set-up. So, since I didn't go to the gym, I still had to stick with the Ab Challenge. I got up about 25 minutes earlier than I would have otherwise in order to do the exercises. This is the book I'm using, in case you're curious:

And this is the awesome price tag:


I pretty much did the exact same exercises as yesterday since I didn't have time to read about a lot of new exercises and I'm definitely still in the "beginner/intermediate" phase of this book. I'm hoping that by the end of this, I'll get better at stability and will be able to do some of the advanced exercises. I tried to do an intermediate/advanced exercise today and that was pretty much a failure. I will say, however, that I think if I'd had a yoga mat underneath me, I might have been okay. The rug we have is pretty slippery and I just needed a little extra leverage for my feet!

I ended up doing exactly 15 minutes worth of exercises today, which I'm very proud of. We're going to a concert in Prospect Park tonight and I knew I wouldn't want to do the exercises when we got home, so I'm glad I'm sticking to the challenge so far. I'd hate to give up on Day 2!

An Early Ride, A Late Ride and A Challenge

This morning I was the alternate Watchdog for the Terrier brick workout. About two weeks ago, they had sent out an e-mail saying that they needed someone to volunteer to watchdog this week and I wrote back saying that since I was the alternate, I was planning on being there anyway. So, I woke up at 4:30, ate, pumped up my bike tires, and headed to the Park.

Except it turned out that they didn't need me. Both of the original people who were assigned showed up and one of the original people had brought a friend. I figured that meant I could go ahead and leave since I was just the alternate, so that's what I did. I actually called Drew as well since we had talked about riding bikes after I was done with my Watchdog duties, I thought I'd see if he wanted to bike earlier. He was working on some work stuff when I called, so I ended up just going back home, which was fine with me. I was a little annoyed that I got up so early to ride 3 miles, but it was fine. We ended up watching some TV and falling back to sleep on the couch for a couple of hours before heading to work.

Since neither of us got a workout in today, we thought that maybe we should do something after work. I suggested that we go for a ride on the Westside Path since we didn't go biking this morning. It was my first time riding up the new and improved portion of the Path (so you don't have to actually enter Riverside Park anymore). It might have actually been just as crowded as the Park part was and going this way means you miss a hill, but it was nice to ride on that newly paved path!

Somewhere along the way, we passed a guy with a hard plastic cast over his left leg, who had a bike helmet, but it was just attached to the front handlebars. He didn't think he needed it on his head, I guess. This cast guy apparently was not happy that we passed him, because for the next few miles, we played cat and mouse with him. Every time we passed him, he'd speed up and pass us back. It was all pretty ridiculous if you asked me. Finally, we ended up making a silly little three-some of Drew, crazy cast guy and me bringing up the back. I actually was a little afraid a couple of times that he'd brake suddenly and I'd go flying, but it ended up being fine.

I almost had a heart attack going up the big hill by the bridge. I made it up to the top just as some other girl was getting on her bike and she sort-of darted out and almost blocked the whole path. My heart was already beating pretty fast from the effort of climbing up the hill and when she darted out, I just got really startled, which didn't help any. Shortly after that, we decided to just turn around and head home and not go the extra mile or so to the end of the path.

I spent a lot of time biking behind Drew and at some point I became convinced he was wearing my socks. Not that it's a big deal, I just thought it was funny. When I mentioned it to him, he looked down at his feet and rode his bike off the edge of the Path into the grass. It's not that big of a deal, it's probably about an inch drop, but in that split second where he was swerving and weaving, I thought for sure he'd wipe out. Luckily, he's a pretty good biker and was able to get back on the Path without any bumps or bruises. I felt pretty bad about making him lose his concentration.

I tend to do a lot of thinking on the bike. Today I realized that I'm not too worried about my own biking abilities or biking in a straight line or all that, but I am concerned about everyone else. I guess it's not unlike driving a car. I know I'm a decent driver, but everyone else on the road is crazy. And there were definitely some crazy bikers out there today!

The other thing I thought about on the bike today was doing an Ab Challenge. I've been thinking about doing this for a while now. To be honest, I think I gained a couple of pounds when I broke my arm and while I know you can't spot treat pounds or fat, I figured that doing some ab work would help me overall with swimming, biking and running. I also really liked doing Pilates with Nicole last year, but it's not really an expense I can afford right now to have private lessons, so I figured I could do some things by myself.

So, since I had been thinking about this for a while, I knew that I wanted to make the Challenge realistic. I didn't want to start it and then not be able to finish it for various reasons, so I thought that I should challenge myself to do 15 minutes of core work every day for two weeks. And on the bike, I realized, what am I really waiting for? If I'm going to do this for two weeks, I don't need to start on a Sunday. I can start tonight!

So, when we got home, we made dinner and then I (with Drew's help) pumped up my Swiss ball, got out my $2.00 Swiss ball exercise book that I got at TJMaxx and started reading. I actually really like the book. There are lots of exercises and they fully explain them all with beginner, intermediate and advanced variations. Then, at the back of the book, there are little workout plans. Not a bad value for $2.99. For two weeks of workouts, that's only $0.21 per workout! Hard to beat that!

These are the exercises I did with the ball tonight:

Sitting Balance - sit, lift one foot off the floor for a count of 5
Abdominals - sit, lean back slightly, hold for count of 5, roll back to seated
Toe Taps - sit, tap toes on one foot 10 times
Back Extensions - sit, roll forward on ball, rock back and forth for count of ten (ball on lower back)
Hip Circles - sit, swivel each way 5 times
Hamstring Stretch
Gluteal Stretch
Cat Stretch (like yoga, hands on ball)
The Swan - lie on ball, push pelvis into ball and lift head slightly
Bottom Toner (intermediate) - lie on ball, lift both legs while clenching butt!
Basic Crunches - lie on floor, legs on ball

This ball thing reminds me a lot of pilates and how you keep your own stomach muscles clenched while doing other exercises. I really enjoyed it and think that this could be a good challenge for me. I think that I spent about 20 minutes doing these exercises and I did them all while watching TV! I asked Drew if he wanted to join the challenge and he said that he didn't really want to but he thought he could probably benefit from some more core exercises. But, then he didn't do anything, so when I've got a 6 pack in 14 days (ha ha!) he can just be jealous!

Biking
Time: 1:11:30
Distance: 14.85 miles
Pace: 12.46 MPH

Total biking for the day: 17.86 miles