Speaking of running, here is how last week turned out in Fitness:
Monday: 10 miles with 7 hill repeats in the middle. I did this workout with the Calhoun Beach Running Club the day after the City of Lakes Half Marathon. My legs were definitely still tired from the race the day before but I have recently read a lot of articles about the benefit of training on tired legs, so maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all. I muscled through it, but took Tuesday off from running to recover.
Tuesday: No running. Took a 60-minute outdoor vinyasa class with Luminous Yoga at Lake Calhoun with my friend Vicki. It was lovely.
Wednesday: 5.5 miles with Matilda. It was windy, rainy, and surprisingly cold. I thought Tilda and I would do two lakes, but she didn't seem to be enjoying herself so I cut it short. In the evening, we had our last strength conditioning for runners class at the Calhoun Beach Club. Overall, I really enjoyed this class and I hope that it made me stronger! We'll see at the OBX marathon...
Thursday: 8.5 miles with my friend Meggan. She had mile repeats on her schedule, so we met in the morning to do the warmup together and then did our separate workouts. I had three 10-minute tempo intervals. I feel like I struggle to hit the same paces in the morning that I can easily hit after work, so I'm thinking I need to save the workouts for the evenings and only do easy runs in the early hours. What do you think? Is it easier for you to run hard in the morning or after work?
Friday: 45 minute "mini-barre" class at The Barre in Edina. This was a condensed version of their 60 minute class. I prefer the 60 minute class because you do a lot more arm work. The 45 minute class still does plenty of core/planks, quads and glute work, but I would rather get take the full 60 minutes of "lift, tone, burn!"
It is a great opportunity for people to get familiar with the TCM course, including the hills coming up from the river and the rolling hills on Summit Avenue. It was too early in my marathon training to do 22 miles, so we hopped in 4 miles into the route to join for the last 18 miles. It's a really fun morning run. I think we had 45-50 people participating! I have posted about this training run many times in the past (HERE, HERE, HERE).
For the past several summer capitol runs, I have had to run a modified route because my marathon is not the same day as the Twin Cities Marathon. The same was true this summer. I still enjoyed 18 miles of the route. I felt great.
We kept our average pace under 9's (I think around 8:50's). I took two Hammer Gels and there were three organized support stops manned by volunteers from our club that had Powerade, water, and other snacks for us along the way.
Sunday:
Today, Dustin, Matilda, and I slept in and eventually went for an easy 5.5 mile run.
FYI, I found my response from Mr. Little Guy in the elf tree! I'll be posting about it Wednesday in my summer bucket list recap.
It was such a gorgeous day that we decided we needed to get more fresh air. Its weird- as a runner, I often don't "count" the time that I'm running as time outside...I always feel get a little FOMO (<- fear of missing out!) if I'm only outside when running and I want to do more and more on a beautiful day. I know that I'm getting plenty of fresh air when running, but for some reason, it doesn't always feel like it counts.
Anyways, after tooling around on our bikes for awhile, we made a pit stop at the Fulton brewery for a quick bite at the Tollfeson's Family Grill food truck.
Total: 5 days of running, 1 yoga class, 1 barre, 1 easy bike ride, and 1 strength day. I felt like this week was pretty well balanced!
Here's what is new in Fitness Fashion!
My running shoe of choice, the Brooks Ravennas just came out with a new ombre color scheme!
I LOVE it and ordered a pair right away. I won't need them right away, as I am already running in a new pair of Ravennas right now-
...but I do like to have another pair on hand so that I am always prepared. So I purchased this new pair in the awesome ombre hue and they will be next in line after my neon pair hits 500 miles...
Yes, I do diligently track the miles in my shoes. I figure it's the least I can do to prevent injury. In fact, after a longer run last week, my shins were hurting. I checked my mileage and realized my last pair had 570 miles on them. It was definitely time to recycle that pair and move on to my backup pair!
That's all from the Right Fits this week. I hope you had a great week- do anything fun in fitness or try anything new in fitness fashion?
Please sign up HERE for the next webinar with Minneapolis Running. We'll be talking Tips for Gear for First Time Marathoners. Would love to have you there!
