Mixing It Up a Little

For all of my past races, I've concentrated on running and a little cross training like spin or other low impact fitness classes offered in the fitness center where I work. I've never worked on speed, hills or weights.

Yesterday was my cross training day so I did 40 minutes of spin. I have the luxury of "The Firm," which is our on-site fitness facility right at my office! I work in the insurance industry, if anybody is wondering. I write commercial insurance policies. . . . lucky for me, my territory is Arizona . . .which is where I travel for work. . . it's not so bad! ; )

Thanks to Angie. . . . . I had one hell of an ass kicking this morning! We didn't run together, but since she developed our training plan, I have to blame give her credit for the amaze-fest workout today!  I've never sweat so much in my life from working out. . . .and I've put a LOT of miles on, so that's saying something.

 Here is what our workout looked like today:

6x800

**You don't know what that means? Well, up until this last week, I had no clue what that crazy runner jargon meant either. I did a 1 mile warm up (10 mile/min pace), then I ran 1/2 mile at a 5k pace (about 8.5 min/mile pace) and then 1/4 mile recovery, then back into the 1/2 mile 5k pace (slightly slower each time I did the 5k pace. Then I did about 3/4 mile of slow cool down pace (about 9:45 min/mile pace).

I learned after my run that I can actually figure out my pace for the sprint portion and the recovery portion by hitting "lap" on my watch. Thanks again to Angie for teaching me how to use my Garmin watch. . . . . I need a lot of work!  She picked a really "needy" running pal.  All in all, it was an excellent workout. Since I never hit my lap button, I just have an overall of each mile. I ran an average 9:22 pace for 6.25 miles. Considering it was 70 degrees with 100% humidity, I'm pretty happy with that. (I'm also very hungry from the extra calorie burnage that interval training gives!).


Today on our lunch break (aka 10:30 am) Angie and I went down to "The Firm" and did some arm work with hand weights and the machines. Lucky for us, we can run down, workout, shower when needed and then grab lunch in the cafeteria and then get back to work.


Here's part of our workout in our awesome fitness center.  Nice perk to working here!


Tomorrow & Thursday are just some easy 4 mile runs.  And when I say easy . . . I actually want to say, they could be tortorous due to the weather.  If you're from the midwest, you know we only have about 2 weeks worth of really hot weather. . . . . which this week happens to be one of them!  Angie and I are used to running in fricking cold weather. . . . so this heat (and mostly the humidity) is pretty darn awful.  We're kind of crazy, but we're looking forward to winter.  Well, at least to the fall when it's not so damn hot!  I would never have thought of bringing water on a 4 or even 6 mile run . . . . . but it's a necessity right now!

Happy Running. . . even in the heat!

~Brooke~