Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Bitter Sweet Running

I have had my good friends in town the last week.   They have two super cute kiddos, one's almost four, and the other is a little over one.  Then we've got Lincoln in the mix.  It was so wonderful to see my friends and have our children play together, however two boys and a little girl are a handful for two tired Mommies.

Even though I was pretty tired, I got up and did my runs.  I didn't make it to boot-camp though.  The first one I just skipped, the second one I got a block away from the park and realized that because I had three car seats in my car I had taken my mat and weights out of the car!  I turned around and slept on the couch.  The punch line here is that later that day when we were loading the kids into the car I realized my mat had been in the car the whole time!

Monday I took off, and Tuesday was an easy 15 minute run/walk. On Wednesday I had a 20 minute run/walk and I woke up at 6 am to get it out of the way.  Since I wasn't with my running buddy I listened to my music, actually for the first time.  That was great, kept me going for sure.  The super cool weather was amazing too.  I ran the whole 20 minutes, including hills.  I actually felt pretty good during the whole run.  Once I got home I went out with the car and drove the route again.  I was slightly disappointed, I had only ran 1.3 miles in 20 minutes.  I was glad that I could run the whole thing, but I surely hope as I continue to run I find my time a little better.

Thursday was my boot-camp day that I had to turn around.  Friday was my off day.  Sunday was my long run day.  I got up and ran around 8:30.  It was already hot out.  I found my calves getting tight pretty quickly, probably because I had so much time between runs.  What I have learned from that run and my following run on Sunday is that I start to hit my stride after 20 minutes has past.  My calves loosen up a bit and I finally feel like I can keep going.  Unfortunately my runs are only 20-30 minutes right now.

I'm really happy with my training but I'm finding it hard to get up for boot-camp.  It's not as hard to get out the house to run, but boot-camp is becoming hard.  It use to be that I had to have something forcing me to get out of the house to work out.  As I progress in this training I am beginning to appreciate not having a time that I have to go run.  Boot-camp is at 5:30 am, so if I'm going to do it that's when I have to get up.  My runs can be done when I want to do them, and for the most part, I actually don't have too hard of a time doing them.  Does this mean I should stop boot-camp and stick to my running plan?  I realize I need some cross training twice a week, but I do have pools near by that I can start doing some swimming.  I'm really struggling with this whole delima.  I love boot-camp itself, but not able to keep up with the morning time right now.  I love my boot-camp instructors, and hate to let them down by canceling my membership... which I have no idea if I can even do that.  It doesn't make since to pay 99.00 a month for something that I'm struggling to make it to.

So it's been a bitter sweet running week.  I have some stuff to figure out... maybe chat with my hubby and boot-camp instructor.  What do you all think?

1 comment:

  1. strength training is a really good thing for you - and helps make running easier. However, if you aren't going to be able to make it to boot camp but you can swim, then I think you are better off to save the $ and swim. My motto is do whatever it is to make your exercise (of any sort) actually happen....I hope that makes sense

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