Weekly Rundown- A Gym PR
Hello and welcome to the Weekly Rundown, hosted as always by Kim and Deborah (thanks, ladies!) It was a good week with some hot, humid runs, and four gym days in a row, which may be a new PR for me (okay, one of those days was to run on the treadmill- but I was there!) Let’s just see how it all played out. Sunday Well, this was frustrating. I had a trail run planned, but when I woke up I heard the dreaded sound of thunder. ARRRG! I don’t mind running in the rain (as a matter of fact I prefer it to the sweltering heat) but I’m not going out in a thunderstorm. I would have gone for a treadmill run, but the gym doesn’t open until 8 on weekends. I waited an entire hour for the storm to pass, and finally felt that it was safe to run. By that point my desire for a trail run had waned (especially considering that it would be soaking wet) so I just went for a 6 mile run on the roads. Sigh. Monday Let’s try this again! No storms this morning, and I got out for a 4 mile run, followed by Caroline Girvan’s ab workout.. Tuesday Leg day at the gym! I did the Daily Shakedown to warm up, followed by five minutes on the stair climber. Then the usual routine of squats, Bulgarian split squats, calf raises. I skipped deadlifts because my low back wasn’t feeling it. I did hamstring curls instead, and then bench press and abs. Wednesday Speed work! This time, I sensibly took it to the treadmill. After a warmup of 1.5 miles, I did 12 x 400 at 5K pace. Whenever I do a workout with that many repeats, I always feel like I’ll NEVER be able to do it when I start out. The first one always feels so hard! But then as I go on it gets a little easier, and once I pass the halfway mark I feel better and better. I was even able to increase the speed gradually for the last six repeats. There’s hope for these turtle legs after all! Thursday This was the “bonus” gym day, an upper body workout. Our gym just got some fancy new machines, and my son likes them. He told me the lat pulldown machine works his lats better than regular lat pulldowns, so I tried it out. Judging by how horribly sore I was the next day, I think he’s right. I also did biceps, triceps, dumbbell overhead press, and abs. Friday Leg day! One of the other fancy-schmancy new machines is the hack squat. My son loves it, so I figured I would give it a try. I did my regular squats first, and deadlifts, then made my way over to the machine. It’s basically like doing a squat that doesn’t involve your low back at all. I think it would be good for working on form (I didn’t get low enough here, because I felt like I didn’t have my feet in the right place- it took me a couple sets to figure it out.) It would also be good if you have a back issue and can’t do regular squats. But I like the fact that squats engage the core. When I pointed that out to my son, he said he doesn’t care about that, he’s just trying to make his quads as big as possible. We have very different goals. Saturday 5 mile run! This run felt pretty good, despite the fact that when I walked out the door it felt like someone threw a hot, wet blanket over me. Side note: Jessie told me she’s been doing the Caroline Girvan deadbug workout and loves it. I realized that I didn’t do it once this week! I’ve been doing abs at the gym, and today they were so sore I just couldn’t bring myself to do the deadbugs. I want to get back to that workout next week though. Sunday On tap for today: lots and lots of sitting. I’m leaving early in the morning to drive my daughter and her friend to camp, in Tallahassee. I’ll stay overnight (and have a fun trail run planned!) and will arrive home Monday night. For that reason, I’ll be extremely late reading and commenting- but I will get to everyone’s posts, eventually! What was your weather like this week? – I was officially running through a swamp. Machines or free weights? Free weights! But my son likes a mix of both.