Tuesday Exercise Report

Note: I swear I thought I hit “post” last night, but I guess not! 😮

So I have to tell you about my run yesterday [Tuesday] morning.

I’ve been faithful to my 10K training plan since I decided in September to try to PR at the Chocolate Run this month. I’ve been following Katie’s plan with only a few adjustments, maybe shaving off a few minutes of a run here or there if I woke up late. But for the most part, I’m putting in the miles and the minutes!

Monday, I woke up a little late and had to cut my 60 minute run down to 55 minutes. I think that’s OK, though. 😉 Yesterday morning, I was determined to get up on time and get out the door on schedule because it was a speedwork workout, and I don’t want to cut those short. I made sure to set up my workout on the Garmin site and transfer it to my watch Monday night, and then I hurried off to bed.  Tuesday morning, I managed to get up on time and I was even out the door a little early. Go me!

The workout was a 10 minute warm-up, then six minutes of hard running with a two-minute recovery, and do that four times.  After that, it was a 10 minute cool down run. For my goal of a sub-60 10k (9:37 per minute pace), “hard” running is a pace between 8:45-9:15. I did almost this exactly work out three weeks ago, only it was 5-minute intervals instead of six.  I managed that workout, and I figured this one would be just a little harder.  It was 51° when I went out, and although it was chilly at first, I was glad I didn’t put on a jacket or long pants, because by the time I was done, I was swearing!

I started out with a slow 10-minute warm up to prepare for the challenging part.  The first hard interval was pretty good (9:06), but the winds were 8-10 mph right in my face, and that made it tougher than I expected.  But I persevered, just telling myself that it was ONLY six minutes. (Although at the five-minute mark, I was really wishing for the 5-minute intervals of three weeks ago!)

I walked most of that first recovery, and then I pushed into the second interval, still face-first into the wind. I was a little more winded for that one, but when I turned at around the halfway mark, I got a break from the wind and that helped.  I finished that almost the same as the first (9:05), and then in the recovery, I walked 1:30 and then turned around to jog the next 30 seconds in the other direction.

After the beep, off I went for split #3, only…a weird thing happened. Instead of my timer showing a countdown from 6 minutes, it showed a countdown from 10 minutes! At first I was totally “WTF?” and my mind could not wrap itself around what was going on. 😮 Finally, I realized that when I entered the workout online, I had never set the number of repeats for the intervals, so it defaulted to only 2! :/ D’oh!!!

That meant I had to do the third interval all on my own, with no help from Garmin to keep me in pace range, and no “happy countdown beep” at 5:55. :p It definitely required some mental stamina on my part, which was fun while running hard (not!), but I did it, and that actually turned out to be my fastest interval! (9:02!)

While running that third interval without aid or guidance, I came up with a plan for the final one: when I got to the 6-minute mark of the 10-minute “cool down,” I hit the lap button, which immediately finished the workout.  Then I quickly pulled up the same workout and restarted it. I used the 10-minute warm-up for my 2-minute recovery, which I walked through to 1:30 and then jogged until the 2-minute mark, at which point I hit the lap button again and it put me into the “first” (for me, fourth) interval.  Doing it this way allowed me to make use of the pace range and the countdown feature.  Not a bad idea, I thought!

I was getting pretty tired by the end of that interval (once again, that last minute felt like FOREVER), but I pushed through and finished strong.  After the two-minute recovery it counted out for me, the watch wanted me to do another interval, but I laughed evilly and said, “Ha! Take that, Garmin!” as I hit the lap button twice to totally bypass it. 😉 From there, I jogged the 10-minute cool-down to home.  It was not my most organized speed workout, but despite the obstacles, I didn’t quit and actually had a good run!

No pictures for that whole episode (it’s dark in the mornings!), but I have another exercise story from yesterday, and this one includes pictures.  Look who I ran into at the gym yesterday afternoon!

(Full disclosure: the gym is in my barn, but our schedules never coincide.)

I didn’t enjoy having to wait for some machines 😉 , but I did make use of the spotter to achieve a major accomplishment for me: when Jason first instructed me in working out, and I did my first bench-press, I had this crazy idea that I wanted to get 50 pounds of weight on that bar and be able to bench press it. That was kind of a lofty goal, considering I started out with 5 pounds!

I’ve been working out on and off for 16 years, and I’ve been at 47.5 for months, just not ready to take the leap, but with Jason’s help, yesterday I did it!

I bench pressed 50 pounds (plus the bar)!

It’s not much to some, but for me it was a long-time goal finally realized! I told Jason I felt like I could move mountains when I was done. As long as those mountains didn’t weigh more than 50 pounds. 😉

Thanks for reading!