Tuesday Tough Grrrrllll!

I declared yesterday that I was going to take things up a notch today. So, last night I went searching through my house for "Run Like a Mother"... only remembering after about 20-minutes that I had loaned it out. Duh.

The reason I was on that quest because there is an amazing (read: ass kicking) workout in it that I wanted to do. I SHOULD have it memorized because I've done it at least half a dozen times. But, all I can remember is that there's a two-mile warm up followed by sets of burpees (we used to call them squat thrusts), push ups, assisted chin ups, crunches... (huh, I guess I remember more than I thought!) and lots of other stuff. All with 5K-pace 400s tossed in every so often for good measure.

So, I Googled around a bit and found THIS no-gym circuit training workout from Runner's World. (This is a great link because it has a video of exactly how to do each move). It focuses on the core and is only 3 "moves" with 3-minutes of fast running in between each. My ego was bigger than my stomach so I also figured I'd do at least part of the second page which works the lower body. I scribbled down enough notes to remember what I was supposed to do and went to bed.

So, at 5:25 this morning I ran to the beach again (about 1.5) and included four 30-second "sprints" in the final part of the run as instructed. I quickly figured out that doing that second (lower body) workout was so.not.gonna.happen! I did the workout as prescribed and tacked on the 1.5 miles home (extra credit?) and now I feel pretty good.

New plan, I think, for getting my training some focus: I'm going to choose a fall marathon and start training as if I'm running it. If Hood to Coast comes through, I can alter things. But, if I don't have a theoretical marathon in my head soon I may lose my grip on.... stuff.