Off The Sidewalk

When I lived in California, I loved running on some well established trails.  Most of the ones I ran on went right by the ocean, offering a pretty awesome run.  Moving to Florida, that's been one of the biggest differences for me.  There are some sidewalks where there are enough houses, businesses, or apartments, but they can sometimes be spotty.

My first experience running off the sidewalk was a few months ago and there were so many holes hidden in the grass that I didn't want to try again.  Well, today I took a different route and decided why not?  I had seen people running on the grass next to the road in front of my apartment and I knew it would eventually hit sidewalk up by one of the hotels.  So, I cautiously took to the grass and ended up running about 1.5 miles on the grass.  The area I ran on didn't have as many holes as the first time I ran on the grass and it really wasn't too bad. There was a small bump for a hill at one point, but overall it was flat and barely sloping.

I was originally planning on going 8 miles today.  I had spent all week thinking about it.  However, I ended up only getting about 6 in... I believe I need to get some new socks as I keep getting blisters on the arch of my foot.  I even used some body glide, but it only postponed when the blisters would start forming.  I have some other shocks I'm going to try next week, so hopefully I know which ones to go get.  Plus, this means another trip to the reebok outlet, which has quickly become my favorite athletic store.  I got my Easytones for $30! and I would have gotten a second pair for $15 and there were other amazing deals I had to resist from partaking in.

Since I didn't get my 8 miles in today, I spent some time on the stationary bike and got a good few miles in on there.  It wasn't hard, just a nice spin time to cool down.  Looks like I'm back to doing brick workouts and I'm definitely not complaining about that cause I love my brick workouts!

Busy Busy Bee

So I've been a busy bee over this last week. I finished up a 10 day work week and then to celebrate my first day off I got in a 5.5 mile run, walked the last .5 of a mile, completed a circuit, and did a lot of stretching.

While my week was busy and spent mostly at work, I was able to get at least 20 minutes of circuit work in.  A few days I got in a short run, maybe a few miles on the stationary bike, and stretching.  I've continued to stretch for at least 20 min every day and my calves are doing pretty well.

It also helps that I have a pretty active job.  I'm standing and walking most of the day.  A few days a week I help one of the other teams out where I'm lifting heavy objects for a while so I even get some unconventional weight lifting in.  The fact that I don't have an office job has helped me stay active on weeks where I work a lot.

I've also added another 5k run to my plan.  Next week I'll be doing a Reindeer Run with some of my friends.  Then the week after the Reindeer Run I have the Jingle Bell Run, so this should be a fun few weeks.  After those weeks it's time to start celebrating the holidays!

Mini-Brick Workout

By definition, a brick workout is when you have a workout in one event or sport and then you follow it with a base workout in another event.  Brick workouts are popular with triathletes because it lets you practice 2 legs of a triathlon in one workout.  When I was on the college tri team, we would normally have brick workouts 2-3 times a week depending on where we were in the season.

What does this have to do with my half marathon training?  Especially since I'm only a week and 2 days out from my race?

Well, I had a mini-brick workout this morning.  I started with a 2.2 mile run on the treadmill (in my back up running shoes since I'm trying to keep my good shoes as alive as possible for the half).  After my run I let my heart calm down by focusing on my arms with some weights.  After that routine I got on one of the stationary bikes and spent another 20 minute bike workout to complete my overall workout.

Sure, when I was doing brick workouts for triathlons they were longer and more intense, hence the reason I called it a mini-brick.  It was still a good workout though and a bit fun considering I wasn't just on the treadmill staring at the TV or out the window. 

I will admit I was hoping for an outside run in the rain.  It's one of the things I'm missing from California.  I miss waking up to a foggy/misty morning and running in the fog.  The closest I'll get is running in one of the afternoon storms, but those usually happen while I'm at work.  We were supposed to have some morning storms because of the hurricane, but it looked like they came last night and there might be another storm moving in now... too bad.  I'll get my run in the rain eventually...