Tempo Tuesday

I promise I’ll stop talking about how awesome the weather is in Boston, but it’s seriously perfection. Sunny and 60s? Yes, please. 

I decided against a run yesterday and went over to my gym for a spin class. I didn’t make the 5:30 class in time, with the instructor I really like, so I took a chance with the 6:30 class. The class was packed, so I figured the guy must be good. I really like spin because I feel like it’s one of those things where you get out what you put in. I also like how it caters to so many different fitness levels. You can make the class as hard, or as easy as you want. I’m not one to bag a workout, so I was there to get sweaty. I’m a little picky when it comes to spin classes, especially when it comes to the music. I wasn’t thrilled about his warm-up song, so I was having doubts. This instructor was a little old school in his teaching style, and there wasn’t too much going on within each song. I’d definitely say this class was more catered to endurance than sprint work, but it worked. A few of the songs seemed to drag on, and half way through the class we did a 9 minute climb. Really? As much as I wanted to hate him, he was also playing Pink’s “Try”:

But just because it burns
Doesn’t mean you’re gonna die
You’ve gotta get up and try try try

Ok, ok, I get the point. It’s not going to kill us. Overall it was a good class. I sweat, it was hard, all in all, a good workout.

Back to running and wanting to be all committed and stuff, I did a tempo run today after work. If I don’t run from my house before work, the odds of me coming home from work at night and going back out for a run are, well, none. To get around this, oftentimes I’ll bring my running stuff to work and just go from there. I wanted to do ~6 miles, so here are my splits:

 

I realize I didn’t really cool down, but I was already back at my office and feeling lazy. I forgot my Garmin at home, so used MapMyRun on my iPhone. I don’t use it often, and completely forgot about the little woman announcing your splits and pace at every mile. It was kind of cool to run by effort rather than looking at my watch, and it was reassuring to hear my pace drop as the run went on. Overall I felt pretty good on this run. I felt like I was running hard, but controlled. I’m hoping to incorporate more speed work in the next couple weeks before my half marathon on October 13th. I’d really love to PR, but I don’t have my heart set on it. I’ve been doing a lot more shorter/faster work outs than long runs, so I’m curious to see how that will translate into a distance race.

I’m planning some easy, relaxed miles tomorrow after today’s tempo. 

Unrelated to anything I mentioned today, but this is a good read if you’re looking for a laugh.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-maclean/surviving-whole-foods_b_3895583.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

What was your workout today?

Would you rather do a long run, or speed work?

 

So long, summer racing

Yesterday’s 5k can be summed up in 2 words: PAIN-FEST. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first lets rewind to the rest of the day.

Because I know you all want to know my daily schedule, my Thursday are spent all day at school with class followed by a 2.5hr lab. Normally I would hate this, as I have hated most labs in my program, but this one is more case studies and critical thinking, so it’s not nearly as bad (or smelly), and actually really interesting. My group ended up finishing our lab a little early, which either means we had no idea what we were doing, or we did great, who knows. I’ve mentioned the weather a couple times this week, so it was no surprise when I left school that it was still a gazillion degrees. I’m still committed to practicing some good race habits, so I wanted to get in some sort of warm-up, but didn’t really want to run around in the heat much longer than I had to. I decided I had enough time, so headed to a Boston Sports Club to do an indoor warm-up. I realized I had only brought enough clothes for the race, so I ducked into a Marshalls and picked up this gem for $5.

Don’t mind my weird face, I promise I did want to be there. I have a bad habit of buying work-out things when I forget them. Thank god for places like Marshalls and TJ Maxx, I think I’ve bought more $10 sports bras than anyone needs in a lifetime. I know you’re probably thinking that one workout probably isn’t worth the trouble and money to buy something you forgot, but it is for me.

I ended up doing about 30 minutes of cardio, just enough to work up a sweat but not work my legs too hard. I did a couple stretches and then changed into my race shirt for the night.

I’ve been trying to sport my Boston gear during races, gotta represent.

I jumped back on the T (that’s what we call our subway in Boston) and headed over to the Charles River for the 5k. I mentioned this race series in a previous post, but they’re the best. They’re held on the 3rd Thursday (I realize yesterday wasn’t the 3rd Thursday, figuring it was early for light purposes) of every month May-September. These races have changed a bit over the years. They used to be 4 milers where everyone would start at once, but now they are 5ks with wave starts. These are not extremely official or fancy races, you kinda just line up wherever the race director decides to start, and then you line up in order at the end so they can kinda guess about what your time might be – so PSA: this is not the B.A.A. BUT, they’re so much fun. There are always awesome live bands, there’s a BBQ and they usually have enough free beer for everyone to have at least 3 – all for $30.

Anyone who can run a 5k <24 minutes is put in the first wave, so I hurried over there to make my wave start at 6:30. I had plans to meet my husband somewhere near the porta-potties (we’re so romantic), but between me taking the train and him driving from work, our timing didn’t really match up and I ended up heading to the start without him. I ran into a couple people from my running club and we chatted a bit before I took a position a bit towards the front of the pack. These races are on trails by the river, so it’s pretty narrow. If you want a chance to run hard, I suggest you get to the front, otherwise you’re at the mercy of the pace of those in front of you. The course is a bit strange as it loops around the start (I know I’m not selling this race too well at this point, but I promise, it’s awesome), which ended up being great because I spotted Ben, my husband, and he jumped in to try to pace me to a PR- ha. Ben is an amazing runner. He ran XC at Lehigh University and is way way way faster than me. Since he was late and couldn’t really “race” the race, it was nice to have some company. I felt good through the first mile, but then the heat and humidity really started to hit me. By about half way, I was looking at my watch just hoping I would be closer to the finish than I actually was. I thought about stopping at the water stop to recollect myself, but I always feel a bit funny stopping at a water stop in a 5k. Since it’s such a hard effort, a few seconds here or there can really make your time. Anyways, by mile 2 I knew I could stick it out for 1+ more miles, but was feeling pretty awful. As we made our way into the last .10m, I knew I was pretty far off my PR. I made it to the end, stopped my watch, and then tried not to throw up in the line to hand in my number. Unofficial finish: 23:09. Not my worst, but definitely not my best. However, in talking to people after the race, I realized most people struggled in the heat, and I was pretty happy with this race because it was a hard effort for me, and I feel like I gutted it out even when I felt terrible. All in all, it was a really fun night. The band flew up from New Orleans that morning to play, and I was obsessed. A few of the band members actually jumped in and ran the race – how cool is that!? A good friend of ours at the race is from LA, so we all had fun dancing and drinking too much free Harpoon. I’ll leave you with one last picture, you can thank Ben for capturing my stellar dance moves.

 

Hope you all have a great Friday! 🙂

 

The Name Game

To hold me accountable, I’ll admit I did not wake up early to run yesterday like I said I was going  here. I’ve been having such a hard time getting out of bed lately and doing anything productive in the morning. Lately, the thought of putting an effort into a workout first thing in the morning seems daunting and miserable. Also knowing I have time after work/school is another reason I’ve been hitting the snooze lately. I’ve come to admit to myself that I am an afternoon/evening runner/exerciser, which is fine, but sometimes it’s nice to get it done and out of the way. With a little extra time in the morning due to my laziness, I thought I’d head over to the social security office to change my last name. Yah- it was just as bad as it sounds. 

The line actually moved fairly quickly, mostly because a lot of people didn’t have all their paperwork ready. I think I shocked the employee when I had all my documents, I almost thought she was looking for something to tell me my application wasn’t complete – she didn’t seem too thrilled to be there herself. If there are any newlyweds out there changing their name, or want to look into the process, I found a couple good guides, which are both pretty similar.

http://www.wikihow.com/Change-Your-Name-After-Marriage

http://wedding.theknot.com/wedding-planning/planning-a-wedding/articles/name-change-101.aspx

Updating your social security card is the first step, and after you receive that, which I was told is about 10 days, you’re good to go with the rest! I’m actually a little excited to get a new license (not excited to go to the DMV) since my current picture is from my 21st birthday- ha!

Back to the working out I didn’t do in the morning: By the time I got out of work at 5:30, it was still way too hot to run. I’ve definitely run in 90+ temps before, but yesterday was so humid and muggy, just walking around was pretty gross. I stalled for a while and thought about what to do – run on treadmill (meh), spin class (?). I ultimately just did some cross training. I pushed myself pretty hard so got a good workout, but was still a little bummed I didn’t get a run in. I’m telling myself it was smart to save my legs for my 5k tonight, but truthfully I would have liked to get some miles in.

I’ll go into more depth in a later post, but after the Boston Marathon this year, I’ve had a hard time getting back into running. The reason I’m bummed I missed some miles yesterday is because I finally feel back and motivated again. I’ve had some great runs in the past couple weeks and I’m hoping to build on that, BUT, reminding myself it’s just one workout and today is a new day.

Today is filled with class and then an afternoon lab before I head over to my race!

Your turn:

What’s your go-to workout when you can’t run?

 

Moving around

I found myself taking quite the tour of Boston today! Tuesdays are a little on the busy side as I have class and then head straight to work afterwards. I’m currently finishing up my requirements to become a registered dietitian, so I’m taking two classes in addition to my job. I started my morning with a little studying at Starbucks

I’m always so tempted to get a Pumpkin Spice latte (or PSL) but I think I need to save that for a treat occasion. Also not really up for spending $4 on coffee. Anyways, after class and work I headed down to the Seaport to scope out some apartments. I hate moving more than anything, but our building is raising out rent so we gotta go. Boston real estate is OOC. Rents have gone through the roof, it’s sickening. I’ve always wanted to live near the water so I met with a real estate agent to check out a couple places.

I was a bit early so I headed to Flour to read a bit. Flour is one of my absolute favorite coffee shops. Everything is absolutely delicious, and totally tempting. I compromised with some trail mix.

I’m not really sure my book would agree with that statement, but whatever.
I finished up the day with a workout at a new-to-me gym. I have a regional pass at Boston Sports Club but don’t venture to new clubs too often. This BSC was a bit smaller than some of the others, but did the trick. I did about 5 miles on the treadmill before I hopped on the elliptical and zoned out with some Bravo TV. I have to get my fix outside my house because my husband has banned certain shows in my home. Mainly anything that has the word ‘Housewives’ in it. I’d like to say I did some strength training, but lets be real, totally didn’t happen.
It’s suppose to be 90 degrees tomorrow, so I’m planning an early morning run before it gets too hot!

Catch you tomorrow!