corners turned and lessons learned

Good Morning...today WILL be an extremely LOOONG day. I'm exhausted.

Yesterday I waited until the afternoon to conduct my working out for the day.

LESSON NUMERO UNO

If you're going to wait until the "after work" rush hour to complete a workout. You better have patience or be willing to spend some extra time on one piece of equipment for another one to open up. I live in a small town and so the gym I go to doesn't have a lot of room or equipment compared to other gyms in bigger towns. My gym has 5 ellipticals and 5 treadmills along with 2 bikes. And then the normal lifting weight kind of machines. I knew the gym would be busy, but I didn't expect it to be THAT busy. I got there a little after 430 and had no problem getting on an elliptical. When I started noticing people hovering, waiting for an elliptical to open up and saw that there was still treadmills available I opted out of the last 5 minutes of my planned 40 minutes of hill intervals and jumped on a treadmill. Not to mention...the treadmill had a TV right in front of it and I was able to watch the evening basketball games on ESPN.

Before I get into my delightful run...I'll share with you...

LESSON NUMERO DOS

As I drove the gym, I realized I had forgotten a very important piece of my gym attire. I was only a couple blocks from the house when I realized I forgot it, but decided I would be ok and opted out of turning around. I guess I had my mind very focused on getting to the gym to REALLY beat the 5 pm traffic.

Meet my buff.

We are the best of friends.

It has many functions.

1. Keeps the sweat out of my eyes (learned this one last night).

2. Holds my hair out of my face. And keeps all the little fly-aways tucked away so I don't look like such a mad woman..seeing how my gym sessions are most often in the morning before I shower for the day.

3 (and most important). Holds my skull candy head phones in my ears.

(yes, Hubby and I have a Cars themed bathroom...that's the shower curtain.)

See how I usually wear it, and see how happy it makes me. Over my ears and head phones so they don't slip out. I don't know why, but my head phones have a huge problem staying in my ears. And I had to mess with them (seriously!!) every 10 seconds of my 35 minutes on the elliptical and 30 minutes on the treadmill. It got very frustrating. I just wanted to rip them out and throw a huge fit. I tried everything. I tried giving them a little "twist into the ear." I tried the "just shove them in as hope they get stuck." EVERYTHING! They managed to wiggle out every time.

This is how depressed I was after last night. No buff. waahhhh!

I have thought seriously about buying a new pair of head phones...the "over the ear" kind for cases like this. And I am looking into it even more after last night episode.

CORNERS TURNED

My workout last night was actually really promising...after getting past the "buff" part.

I hopped on the elliptical for 35 minutes (scheduled for 40, but the hover-ers were making me nervous) of hill intervals. My thighs actually felt really good last night. So I think the tightness and burning comes from working out in the mornings.

I jumped on a open treadmill. I found a college basketball game and saw that there was 11 minutes and some change left in the first half. I decided that instead of counting the minutes on the treadmill. I would watch the basketball minutes. We all know that you can guarantee almost twice of what is actually left on the clock of any sporting event. I figured it would help make the time on the treadmill go a little less painful. And it did. I was sure frustrated when it was foul after foul, and then double bonus time and commercial time. But I managed to hang in there. As I was running I thought to myself...I could run through the halftime show too. But I had up'ed my time, so I was running on empty. I hit my 5K (and better-ed my time!) at 28:05 right as the first half ended in the game. I told myself I could do 2 more minutes and boosted the speed to finish out the time. I'm glad I stopped when I did, because I didn't have much left in the tank when I hit the "cool-down" I was whooped. But, I averaged a 9:05 mile (totally thrilled!). I'm starting to actually feel like a real runner. To do a 10K...I think I'm going to have to slow my time just a little to have enough left in the tank to finish strong. But I'm thinking nothing less than a 9:30 mile should be totally do-able.

This morning workout was minus a run. When my alarm went off at 0500 (and Hubby gladly joined me again) I crawled out of bed and felt slight discomfort in my foot. So I decided I should probably try NOT to but much more stress on it for fear of doing some real damage and then be done running for a while. I just played it safe and jumped on the elliptical for 50 minutes of hill intervals. I was plenty warm and stretched out when I was done. I felt good. And it wasn't until coming to work that I finally got sleepy. Hopefully...I can manage to keep my eyes open and get something productive accomplished today.

Until next time....