7 miler and a personal training session

Yesterday, I ran 7 miles.  It was beautiful outside, close to 60 degrees and sunny.  I just had to take advantage of that because this winter it has been snowing a lot and has been really cold.  We have never gotten this much snow before!  The 7 miles was a good run.  It was my longest run since October, I believe!  Most of you know, I have had a rough winter of not wanting to run.  The only thing that kept me running here and there was the Winter Series I signed up for.  I think I am finally back!  For a few months, I have tried putting a training plan on my calendar, but haven't followed through with anything.  The last 2 weeks, I have run every run on my calendar and actually look forward to each run.  That's how I know I'm back! 

Anyways, I'm hoping now that I'm back, I will quickly drop the 8 pounds I have put on since my running came to a stop.  Not just those extra 8 pounds, but I hope to lose close to 20!  I have turned my diet around the last two weeks as well, turning down certain restaurants and not touching the pizza that my husband's friends bring in my house.  I'm rather proud of myself lately!  In a effort to be serious about the weightloss, I jumped on an offer from a local physical therapy/fitness center.  It's not a gym, but offers personal training sessions for cheaper than any local gym around here.  I went this morning for my first session.  She new I was a runner, and I think that's why she kicked my butt, lol.  I asked her to take it easy on my due to my 7 miler the day before, but she didn't really.  I did 10 minutes on the treadmill and 10 minutes on the stairmaster, but at a HR of 170.  She kept turning up the resistance, telling me my HR wasn't high enough.  I'm looking at her like she's crazy!  After the cardio, we did some upper body free weights exercises, 3 sets of 15 reps each.  After that, she had me do walking lunges up and down a hallway 4 times.  So much for going easy on my legs!  Every inch from my ankles to my butt is hurting right now!  Finally, she had me do those situps.  It was a good workout, I must say.  Honestly, it's the same type of stuff that I would normally do on my own at my local gym, but not near the intensity she had me do.  I would definitely let myself take it easier on the cardio.  But, that's what I need.  A kick in the butt to turn up my cardio a notch.  Just because I am a runner and can run long distances, doesn't mean my cardiovascular system is trained to do high HR workouts.  It's definitely a different kind of cardio that will probably benefit my running in a positive way.  I'm going back Friday.  Hopefully my butt won't be sore anymore!

Where have I been??

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately!  The truth is, I have been running, just not blogging!  I think I am finally getting out of this winter funk, and really getting excited about running again.  I ran the 3rd race of the Winter Series on Valentine's Day.  It was a 10k.  I haven't run or trained much for any of the Winter Series runs, just enough to get through them.  Overall, my times were slower on each of these races this year compared to last year, but I actually trained last year.  Here are my times for last year and this year:

          2008-2009 Series         2009-2010 Series
5K          29:30                              29:35
8K          47:48                              52:43
10K        1:01:56                           1:03:38
Finish:      117 out of 143                not posted yet

Basically, the 2008-2009 series was when I first started out as a runner, and I was training decently hard for a beginner, and running 3-4 days per week.  The 2009-2010 series, I was a huge slacker.  I ran my 15 miler in September, and then running kind of took a back seat.  My best 5k time during training was 26:50is, so you can see my 5k time definitely slipped.  My 8k time sucked this time around, but that's not completely my fault.  That race, there was snow and ice on the whole course, so I ran slower to keep from busting my behind!  The 10k, I really surprised myself this year.  I thought I would be dead by mile 4, trying to run at a decent pace, but I somehow found this burst of energy and maintained my pace till the end.  I just want to say that I ran a 10k this summer that involved horrible hills for most of the run, and finished in 58 minutes, so to finish the winter 10k, which is completely flat in 1:03, is pretty pathetic.  Then again, I try to tell myself that's not so bad considering I have been running less than 10 miles per week up till then!  Not so bad, then, huh? 

Now that the winter series is over and the warm weather is right around the corner, I am getting super excited.  I have a lot of races on my race calendar already through July, and hope to add more.  I want to add a half marathon somewhere in there around June.  I am definitely getting back into it!