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Saturday, August 24, 2013

Stronger and faster...

I'm bringing you a joint post today. With my working overnights this weekend, I was thoroughly exhausted when I got home yesterday morning and needed sleep more than exercise. When I woke up, I didn't feel the absolute greatest and needed at least some water before even thinking about working out, and even still I almost didn't get a session in. However, Abi and I were able to eat supper much earlier than we might have normally with this schedule, and by about 10:15 PM I had the Power 90 workout up and running.

I was worried about residual soreness from Wednesday's workout, which was still bugging me when I got home Friday morning, but after sleeping all day most of it had gone away and it didn't bother me at all. Better still, the workout seemed to go much smoother than Wednesday. I left the weight where it had been (15 pounds for all of the exercises) and it was a good deal easier to go through everything. Hopefully I stretched everything out sufficiently afterwards to prevent a lot of aches and pains from building back up. One blessing is that I won't be hitting the weights until Monday.

Today, then, I hopped on the treadmill in the fitness center at work after my shift was over because of the heat and humidity (with a high of 96 predicted, it's not surprising it felt so warm outside even at 8 AM). At the suggestion of a friend of mine, I started out with a brisk half-mile walk before stretching to loosen everything up. I think it really made a difference in my ability to run as well as the recovery.

I stayed pretty consistent with the rest of this week, logging 2.38 miles in 30 minutes, a 12:36 pace. I started out hitting my jogging intervals at 6.1 mph, and managed to get through the first 3- and 5-minute intervals at this speed. During the second 3-minute jog I had to back off a bit after a minute or two, and for the second 5-minute jog I started at 5 mph, with a little burst of speed during the last minute. With the temps predicted to be hovering around 100 degrees this coming week, I'm going to use the treadmill at work when my shift is over. I'll have to experiment, but I think if I start at 5.5 mph I can maintain it throughout.

Next week I'm using the 5th week schedule from C25K, which means every day will be a different workout, culminating in a solid 20-minute run on the last day. Definitely exciting!


I am blessed with a fitness center at work I can use as well as a set of adjustable dumbbells here at home, but don't feel like you need fancy equipment or a gym membership to get healthy yourself. Milk jugs filled with water, sand, concrete, or whatever you can add to give them some weight can be used for strength training purposes, and there are many exercises you can do with simply your body. Diet is also a major portion of weight loss, if that's your goal, and keeping a food diary is a huge element in that regard. MyFitnessPal is a great website for this, though you can log everything by hand if you'd prefer. Keeping a food diary forces me to evaluate 1) if I'm really hungry, and 2) if the snack/meal I'm considering is really worth the hit to my daily calorie goal.

Have a great weekend, and I look forward to seeing you next week!

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