<p>I guarantee that i-dad will out-burpee all of us, and I would not even dare to play tennis with BC or run a marathon against MOfWC, even in her healing-from-injury form. And CJane - I will never be able to do the crazy weights stuff you describe. :)</p>
<p>Jane- I’m not fast anymore and I AM in awe of your workouts! I am older and slower, but as long as I’m still competitive in my age group, I’m OK with it. I lost speed since 2009, too, due to the injuries. My longer runs are over 10:00 pace and in 2009 they were under 9:30 unless I was on the hilliest courses. My effort level is the same and some of the speed will come back- or not!</p>
<p>MOfWC, as my friend jokes, as long as one gets older, s/he does not need to get faster to qualify for Boston. You are superfast for your age group (I’m in a younger age bracket, so pay no attention to what I’m doing).</p>
<p>BB- Your times are really excellent. You clearly have a lot of speed left over. I always was more of an endurance person, but it’s still frustrating to be slowing down. Back in the day the Boston qualifying times were much more difficult. They are tightening things up a little bit again, but even though I qualified in 2009, you couldn’t pay me to go run that thing again. I am going to have to sit on my hands or be away from the keyboard at 8am on August 1 which is when you have to register for Flying Monkey Marathon. I am NOT running Monkey. Can not train for it, will get hurt on the hills and will not “donate” another entry fee. I will not sign up. Repeat after me…</p>
<p>Damn that sprinting video I posted yesterday. I started thinking about driving with my hips and that, of course resulting in jogging a little faster. I averaged 10.02 min/mile for the five intervals and had a fast interval of 9.34 min/mile. </p>
<p>This, of course, meant that I was back to panting like a dog. I hit a high heart rate of 102% of my max on the final interval. I think that’s the highest I’ve ever seen.</p>
<p>Gorgeous day. Bright blue sky. 82 degrees. Not too humid.</p>
<p>800 meters 4:15
Rest 3 minutes
800 meters 4:15
Rest 3 minutes
800 meters 4:25
Walk 6 minutes</p>
<p>Well my exercise today was salsa dancing in the park, fun. Of course then it was followed by joining friends at a nearby restaurant - I had one crab cake and one glass of white wine.</p>
<p>Splurged today on my diet…ate a whole bowl of cherries. They were very good!</p>
<p>5 miles - that’s all I had time for tonight.</p>
<p>NMinn - cherries are not a splurge. They are delicious and packed with nutrients! I had a bowl at lunch, too, followed by a bowl of blueberries a couple of hours later.</p>
<p>D came back from her internship, went running, and then said that her shin splints were bad again and her IT bands were really painful. Sent her off to my PT, who found she has super tight calf muscles (for which she can probably thank me) and prescribed some intense massage and sessions with the exercise physiologist, who happens to be the trainer with whom I work. The trainer evaluated her and said, basically – your core is way too weak, your glutes are too, and all that instability is giving you bad running mechanics. And, your calf muscle tightness is adding to the problem. She’s prescribed some intense core strengthening exercises – and the kicker was that she told D to just check with me to make sure she was doing them right – and that I was doing more advanced versions of these exercises but that D needed to stick with the basic versions since her core strength wasn’t as good as mine. Ha! Revenge of the middle-aged mom who now has a strong core. </p>
<p>She also taught D how to do plank the correct way; apparently the way she learned in XC was really bad form. </p>
<p>She’s going to see her a couple more times before she goes back to college, and seems to have taken the strengthening message to heart. She’s also using my foam roller every day, and honest to God I don’t know how she does those IT band rollouts because they hurt like the dickens and I just couldn’t do them for more than thirty seconds. (Though with all the core and strength work I’ve done my IT bands are way happier than they’ve ever been.) I think I’m going to send the foam roller back to school with her if I can figure out how the heck to ship something that long rather than buying a new one.</p>
<p>I hope it helps her. She really loves to run and does a lot of her hard thinking then, and for the moment, the PT says no running. She’s off on a bike ride now, but it isn’t the same. </p>
<p>But how cool is it that my core stability is now better than hers? (That probably won’t last long given her age and drive, but I can gloat for at least a few weeks, eh?)</p>
<p>Can she do pool running? As we’ve discussed, it can be pretty boring, but I know a lot of runners who maintain just about all their conditioning that way.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We must be related. I am super tight from my Achilles to my glutes - hamstrings and calves are unbelievably tight. Another place where I do my Lamaze breathing is on that damn roller, attempting to roll out my, you got it, super tight IT band.</p>
<p>Today’s workout</p>
<p>Warm Up
1 lap run
20 lunges
10 supermans/ supermen?
10 push ups
20 air squats</p>
<p>Work Out
1 lap
3 rounds of:
15 15# wall balls with full squats
15 20# ball slams</p>
<p>1 lap</p>
<p>2 rounds of:
20 35# kettle bell goblet squats
20 35# kettle bell swings</p>
<p>1 lap</p>
<p>Time 18:15</p>
<p>arabrab, you rock!</p>
<p>I think some of our kids are not in as good shape as we would think, even though they are young & active. Speaking of my own, they spend a LOT of time in chairs on the computer, and doing sports on weekends doesn’t really make up for that.</p>
<p>Felt pretty crappy today (hard workouts for something like 10 or 12 days in a row) so I decided to do one mile (I said that I would do these regularly but a bunch of tennis invites appeared). So today I did a fast (for me) mile. 8:38. HR was 156 so a fair amount of room to spare. Felt great after a some weights and a shower. My guess is that I’ll go back to feeling crappy in a few hours.</p>
<p>Tennis is likely tomorrow and Sunday.</p>
<p>Two of my water bottles got smelly (these were discarded vitamin water bottles from my son) so I’m going to pick up some real water bottles. I may do some more weights tonight - depends on what my son wants to do.</p>
<p>Well, I capped off a really good week of workouts with my third installment of this week’s NROL4A warmup, iPod nazi core, and three sets of four weight lifting exercises. Solid, workman-like effort today. Did every rep of every core exercise except one – I fell off the stability ball before the sixth rep on one side of these insane one legged knee drive crossovers. But, I did all six on both sides in the third set. </p>
<p>Long workout for me: 1 hour 16 minutes.</p>
<p>speaking of core exercises, this one has been kicking my butt. I finally did three good 60 second sets today, but I have to just gut it out, kind of like the old days of plank and side plank. It looks so simple, but it just gets everything burning, especially the abs.</p>
<p>[Stability</a> Ball Birddog - YouTube](<a href=“Advanced Six Pack Abs Workout - YouTube”>Advanced Six Pack Abs Workout - YouTube)</p>
<p>My only concern is that it is so tiring that it pushes the arch out of my lower back. I’ve started putting a thin one-inch foam pad under my lumbar back for a little extra support. I think this is becoming a little less of an issue as I get stronger with the exercise.</p>
<p>The rain we so badly needed arrived at mile 7 of my 10 mile run. Lightening and thunder, too. I had NO idea it was going to rain. I had forgotten what rain even was! The Team in Training walker/runners were huddled under the bathroom shelter at my mile 8 1/2, and I stopped for a few minutes because the lightening was close. I started to get chilled (still 76 degrees, though) and stiff, so I forged ahead and finished up. Water was running almost ankle deep at some points. My husband is still out somewhere on his bike (50 miles). He hasn’t called, so I guess he’s OK. I thought I would have to go get him. The first miles of my run were tough. It was SO humid and hot even with the cloud cover. I slowed down the pace but was considering cutting it short. It’s done.</p>
<p>Arghh. Having to finish up 3 more miles after getting drenched to the bone doesn’t sound like much fun! I guess it’s pretty much unavoidable in the South as those thunderstorms can pop up any time anywhere. I’ll never forget the first time I got caught out on an all-day motorcyle ride with no rain gear. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my life, and it was 80 degrees.</p>
<p>I bet a hot shower felt pretty darn good when you got home.</p>
<p>Since it stayed in the mid-70s and I was moving, I did OK. Had a towel in my car which helped. I don’t usually get caught in the rain. It’s pretty rare, actually. A lot of my friends love running in the rain. I don’t. I had some hot Ovaltine with marshmallow fluff in it.</p>