Fitness Friday

Happy Friday everyone!

I’m struggling a bit with how fitness will fit into my blog.

Ever since I made the decision to no longer do journal-style entries, I have had trouble writing about fitness, which is still very much a part of my life and something I like sharing here.

So I have a question: Would you be interested in seeing a Friday Fitness Roundup? Basically a blog post that talked about what I did fitness-wise in the past week?

Maybe it would go something like this…

Friday is typically my informal rest day.  It always seems like there is something going on after work and I have a really hard time going to bed early on Thursday night.  Thursday night is college night, so somewhere it’s been ingrained in my head that I must have fun and I must stay out late on Thursday nights. Is anyone else having trouble growing out of this?

But last Friday, I actually had time to work out after work.  And lucky me, Jenn agreed to pick me up so that we could go to Freedom Park and do a self-led homemade boot camp.

I took charge of creating three circuits, which consisted of:

– 2 cardio moves (think burpees and mountain climbers)
– 1 lower body move (like plyo lunges and jump squats)
– 1 upper body move (like bench dips and pushups)
– 2 core moves (like bicycles and plank)

We did each circuit twice, then ran a lap around the pond, which is about .67 miles, before moving onto the next circuit.

The workout and my workout companion were great! The only thing I regret was not taking a yoga mat to lie on while doing the core work.  I’m pretty sensitive to grass so I was super itchy by the time we were through.

I purchased new running shoes recently, and despite their pristine appearance, they’ve seen their share of miles this week.

Saturday – ran 8 miles with my friend Chloe
Monday – ran 5 miles with my friend Andrea
Wednesday – ran 2 miles with Brad in the morning, then ran 4 miles with Nicole that afternoon
Thursday –ran 4.4 miles with my running group and my new friend Jeni 🙂

Weekly Total – 23.4 miles

I didn’t push myself to do speedwork or run very fast this week.  I’m just enjoying running right now, but am especially enjoying running buddies.  They make any run 10 X better!

Conversations included: going on weird dates, where life is taking us professionally, wedding plans, using veggies in new ways, Brad’s knee injury, and a fun trip to a lake house.  🙂

Did anyone catch that?

Brad ran 2 miles on Wednesday! With NO knee pain!

I’m crossing my fingers and arms and eyes that this means that he is recovered from whatever was causing his knee to hurt when he ran.  I’m looking forward to my partner in life and my partner in crime to once again be my number one running partner.

Updated to add: On Sunday, Brad and I went on a four mile walk to the new house and back, stopping so I could do a little weeding in the garden.  We also biked for about an hour, which included some perusing of landscapes in the Myers Park and Estover neighborhoods to get ideas, and most importantly involved a break at Menchies. 🙂

With all that running, I have had some time to sneak in a little weight training.

I ordered Personal Training with Jackie, two weeks ago and finally got to try it out on Tuesday. It was a tough 30 minute workout that focused on supersets, which you do for a full one minute period.

It was tough to hang on that long to one exercise and  I worked hard to get through the entire video.  Although this workout claims to be cardio and strength in one, the cardio is not as obvious as I thought it would be.

But this is actually fine with me, since I’ve been running so much.  I would like to sneak this video in my schedule sometime in the upcoming weekend because I could greatly benefit from more strength training.

You know I love me some Jillian DVD’s so I can’t help but to compare the two.  The biggest differences between this video and Jillian’s 30 day Shred are:
– This workout is 30 minutes (10 minutes longer than one of the 30 day Shred workouts).
– Jillian incorporates more cardio.
– Jackie concentrates on doing a move for a full minute while Jillian does 20-30 reps per move.
– Jillian gives you three levels from which you can choose, while there really is only one level in Jackie’s video.  However, both show modifications to make it easier or to not stress an area where you’re injured.
– Jackie has you do each exercise once, while Jillian has you do a circuit, then repeat so that you’re doing every exercise twice.

My favorite?  I don’t know if I can choose between the two, only because I really like variety and think it’s most beneficial to mix it up a little.  It’s easy to get burned out on one DVD so I really like having several to choose from.  It’s even better when your DVDs feature workouts for different lengths of time.  When I have a good chunk of time, I’ll do No More Trouble Zones for 45 minutes, but this Jackie Warner video and the 30 Day Shred are good for when I only have about 30 minutes to spare or if I’m planning to do some cardio later in the day.

On next week’s agenda:
My first ever trail race!
More running
– Hopefully a little more strength training
– I’m also kind of jonesing to do a little yoga (did I just say that?).

I think reading yogi blogs makes me want to actually go to yoga myself.  I especially enjoyed recently reading my friend Jen’s account of completing yoga teacher training. Just like reading about people being really committed to running makes me want to lace up my shoes, reading Jen’s post made me want to go back to yoga after over two months of not attending a single class.  I’ll never be a yoga teacher, but it is something I tend to enjoy, the more I do it.

So there you have it…

A typical Fitness Friday post.

Do you like reading about fitness? Is Fitness Friday something that you would like to see on a regular basis?