Fashion Friday

Well it is Friday. The sun is shining (although the forecast doesn’t look perfect for the weekend) and I feel happy great.  What more could I ask for?  Enjoy the simple things in life like a beautiful Friday morning.  It’s best to just embrace happy moments when you get them.  I think I feel very happy because aside from the passing of those PMS hormones, I had another fabulous solid workout last night and this weekend should be a fun one.

Last night I worked up my chest/triceps/shoulder workout and headed for the gym.  I wasn’t sure how my legs were going to fair given I was pretty damned sore but I thought what the hell anyway, let’s run.  There is a small chance that running a little loosens up my legs and the tightness and I was going to go with that.  On the way to the gym my cousin’s fiancé texted me and was asking questions about the gym situation etc.  She also goes to my original gym and is not happy.  Anyhow we were texting back and forth and after a bit was like hey if you ever want company at the gym let me know I’d like to have a partner.  I said, sure, anytime girl.  I’m here M-Th pretty much every night at 5:30 PM you’re always welcome.  I ususally have little lists in hand.  And for good measure I texted her my workout for last night and was this is what’s on my agenda tonight.

She immediately texted me and said if you don’t mind can I come join you?  I of course said sure my other friend Michelle was coming and that was totally fine she could join me.  I said I was going to warm up on the treadmill and then start my workout. 

So I walked for like 2 minutes to see how my legs would fair, and surprisingly they were good.  So I thought I would like run, run just for the hell of it.  So I literally stopped the treadmill and restarted it and immediately bumped the speed up to 6.6 the speed from last night where I ran a mile at.  And you know what, it was feeling pretty damned good, so after a minute or so I bumped it up to 6.8, and then 30 seconds later went to 7.0 and I ran.  At some point, as the seconds ticked by and the mileage went up and I saw I was very close to an 8:30 minute mile I decided to bump the speed up to like 7.5 to finish the run out.  I literally finished 1 mile just as the timer ticked over to 8:30.  So yes, I ran an 8:30 mile last night and it felt great.  I stopped the treadmill, breathed for a moment and started it again, this time at 6.6 to run 1 more mile.  So a 6.6 mile per hour pace equals a 9:10 minute mile.  And I did that exactly.  So basically last night I ran 2 miles in exactly 17:40 and this is exciting and excellent news for me.  I think this is what they call doing speed drills. Or speed training.  I knew I wasn’t doing a long run so I might as well try and run faster.  It was good. I needed it.  I felt good and was sweating a bunch at this point.

My cousin’s fiancé Kaylie arrived and then Michelle arrived and we began my workout.  Here’s the workout.

So the thing that was once again confirmed for me last night was that I do get a lot of joy out of planning or leading a workout.  There is a sick pleasure in it.  Somewhat I think it derives from the fact that I do like to help other people achieve fitness goals.  I know, this is somewhat indicative of me needing to consider personal training.  But maybe it wouldn’t be fun if it was a job?  Maybe it’s only fun because there’s no pressure and I’m just helping people that I genuinely like.  Also because they are forced to do the exercises that I pick out and want to do.

Anyway, we started with bench press. 65 pounds is a moderate to heavy weight.  I like this weight because I can do these all on my own without any help and get 20 reps without assistance.  This weight is good in groups because the other two gals with me are able to accomplish this weight with help and therefore I don’t have to load and unload a bar a ton of times.  I love heavy bench presses. Its old school traditional exercise but it is damned effective.  Nothing works your chest muscles like a traditional press.  But mostly you do need to have a spotter just in case. 5 sets of these gets tough.  I was able to manage 3 entire sets of 20 without a single bit of help.  Set 4 and 5 by about number 14 or so I needed a little help getting it back up.  This is about perfect.  You should start to feel it after 4 or 5 sets.  Typically I just do 4 sets of every exercise but on occasion I like to throw in that 5^th set just to be brutal and really fry the muscles.

We then moved on to the remainder of my list.  I’m kind of a slave driver. But at least I do everything that I ask anyone else to do.  That’s the difference between my workouts and personal training.  In personal training they just watch you and make you do all the work.  In my workouts I’m right there in the trenches with you feeling the pain too.  But I just don’t know anything different than how I roll.  Meaning, these workouts seem totally on par and in line with what I should be doing in an evening. This is the amount of effort I put out and expect to have to do.  I realize in hindsight that my workouts are actually pretty challenging and demanding.  They seem normal to me, but they are on the longer side and more difficult side of the spectrum. 

I also realize in leading workouts how knowledgeable I really am about exercise.  Not nutrition. I suck at that. But exercise, yeah, I am pretty good.  I like sharing my knowledge too. I mean I paid for it actually.  I paid a lot of money for a long time for that knowledge so I might as well pass it on to those people I care about.  I told Kaylie she was more than welcome any time to come work out, and I mean it.  What good is my knowledge if I can’t share it with family. 

In the end it was about an hour and a half workout and I burned my normal 550 calories.  I just can’t seem to escape this number.  I guess that’s about what I can expect my body to burn in an hour and thirty minutes.  It could be worse so I should not complain.

Today was going to be rest day but I’ve decided to re-evaluate that this week.  The thing is, I took off last Sunday and all so I’ve only gone 4 days in a row this week which is fine, I’m not saying I need to do more, but just that my body can handle 1 more day today.  Sunday is my half marathon and I try and take off the day before a half if possible so that would mean taking Saturday as my rest day.  This means I shouldn’t take Friday as a rest day.  Therefore, I packed gym clothes with me and will attempt to do something tonight. I don’t have a plan. I am not going to write out a plan.  I am going to go with the flow of things.  This is also okay on occasion as well.

So tonight I will gym once more this week and take tomorrow as my rest day in preparation for a half on Sunday.  And that is a okay with me.  I’m looking forward to my half on Sunday actually.  A nice big long run.  My body is kind of ready for a nice relaxing long run.  Funny how I’d use the word relaxing and long run in the same breathe.  But there is a lovely pleasure in the pain that is relaxing.  But here’s the scoop.  The run starts at 9 AM.  So if I figure 2.5 hours approximately, that means  11:30 finish time, and then you have some cool down, so let’s say we left at Noon, then we must drive home and it’s about 45 minutes away so let’s just say I’m home at 1 I then have to immediately shower and get ready and leave the house by like no later than 2 PM because I have to then drive an hour to my Garth Brooks concert which is Sunday at 4 PM.  So Sunday is going to be massively crazy and tiring and insane.  Yes, I’m a total nut job for trying to do it all but that’s how I roll.  At least it’s the 4 PM concert and not the 8 PM show.  Because at least this one’s end time is estimated at 7 PM so that means I’ll probably be home by at least 9 which is nice, because I will need to immediately sleep!  Crazy, crazy girl. Oh well, we only live once right.

Today I’m also happy because in 3 weeks I get to go to Vegas. I might count down like this every Friday for the next 3 weeks. As much as I love run-cations the idea of going to Vegas simply to go to Vegas and have fun is kind of appealing.  I mean, not going to run.  When you go to run you have to be very careful of what you put into your body and your sleep and alcohol etc.  It’s nice to be able to go and just totally enjoy myself. I’ve already decided that I am going to allow myself to get drunk.  I rarely do this and what the hell, I’m not running!  I’m going to Vegas in November to run again and I’ll be “better” on that trip, but this one is about fun.  And that puts a smile on my face. 

In the meantime, I have no idea what’s on the agenda for tomorrow.  Nothing at the moment. The forecast shows little rain clouds in the forecast for tomorrow and that is a sad thing.  Right now it’s holding steady that it’s just cloudy on Sunday for my run. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t venture into rain clouds too.  Not a fan of running in the cold rain.  But Saturday is rain clouds, and Monday is rain clouds. Somehow the forecast is showing just a cloud for Sunday. And yes the pictures are very scientific and all. I judge my life based on little cloud pictures on my iPhone.

But secretly I am kind of excited that I don’t have a single plan for tomorrow and that I decided to switch up my rest day to tomorrow instead of today. That is nice. So yes, I just have to do some sort of workout tonight and then I get an entire day to be lazy and free and do whatever I want, including sleeping in.  That feels better than having a workout loom over me tomorrow or feeling guilty for not working out, etc.

Anyway, I have decided that Friday is going to be my day where I post and recap all of my weeks cute workout outfits. Yes, I am obsessed with cute workout clothes.  So yes, I take photos every day and will post them on Friday’s.  That’s going to be my thing.  Anyway, here are this weeks ensembles.

Fashion Friday.... yup yup...