Week in Review/PFTW

Hola!

This week is spring break for my kids, which really means it's the week of zero quiet and still waking up early. #1 has track practice every morning, so no sleeping in for meeeeee.

Spring break is way less fun as a grown up.

Last week....

Monday - 88 min XT
I was "excited" to see Fitness Blender releasing a new 1000 calorie workout - but then I turned it on, and quit, because I cannot kickbox. I gave it a shot, through the first two rounds of HIIT, but I spent the entire time being confused about punching and kicking and figured that was not a valuable use of my time (haha).

Instead, I did this 88 minute video. I've done this one before, and I do like it - but it is exhausting. 10 minutes of abs, 36 minutes HIIT, 26 minutes full-body strength, plus warm up/cool down. Dead dead dead. Hamstring curls? Such little movement, such big pain.

Tuesday - yoga/run
Did the new Fitness Blender stretching/pilates/yoga video (30 minutes) in the morning, followed by run club Tuesday evening.

Instagram, yo

The Tuesday night run club is sponsored by Lifetime Run, and led by my old PCRF Coach, Doris. I'll follow her anywhere, because she's one of my most favorite people. The group run is free, and meets Tuesday evenings in Laguna Hills. Easy 3 mile out and back catching up with some friends. It was HOT, but worth it.

Wednesday - 4 miles "speed" work

I planned on 1 mile warm up, 2 miles "race pace", 1 mile cool down. I based race pace on my Holiday Half PR from December, which is not really in play right now since I just barely started running again regularly. But I figured it would give me an idea of what kind of fitness I had.

Except that I'm dumb and don't follow plans - instead of sticking to the pace I wanted (9:35ish), I ran FAST to see how fast I could manage. Which defeated the entire purpose of this exercise. My two miles clocked in at 9:23 and 8:56, which is fast for me, and was certainly not sustainable. I don't know what I was trying to do. That was silly.

That afternoon, I took Gab to the pool because it was NINETY BILLION DEGREES. Apparently SoCal skipped winter and spring and went straight into summer. 

the toothless wonder

Thursday - XT

One of my favorite things about Fitness Blender videos, is that I can combine them to make a longer workout - on Thursday, I did this warm up video (10 minutes), my favorite upper body/core combo video (30 min), and the yoga video from Tuesday. Solid hour of cross training/stretching.

Thursday evening, I'm sure you can guess where we were. I'll give you a hint. 

You never would have guessed, would you. They raced on a crappy dirt track, and it was not a good night for #1. They don't have any races this week, so a nice 2 week break for her will probably do her some good. I didn't participate in high school sports, because I was busy being a lazy, anti-social jerk, but it often seems hard to be a high school athlete, where they're expected to perform at a high level so often - twice a week for 6-8 weeks in track seems crazy, to me. Good thing they're young and feisty!

Friday - "long" run

I was telling the H that it seems crazy that 8 miles is a long run for me, when a year ago, it was an easy mid-week run. Anyway. Kept the pace easy, and caught an episode of Real Housewives of OC that I hadn't seen, so success! 8 miles in.

Saturday/Sunday - nothing

Really. Nothing at all, except eating. 

Total - 15 miles (eh)

PFTW

Monday - XT. There's a Fitness Blender video I want to try out (this one - 40 minute lower body - if you want to follow along at home). Gab has also requested to do their kids video again, so I'll likely do some of that, too, even though it kills me dead (seriously, how are the cardio/hiit videos SO HARD??). 

Tuesday - easy/run club, hopefully 4 miles?, upper body

Wednesday - 5 miles, tempo (lol)

Thursday - yoga, easy XT

Friday - 10 miles

Saturday - arms/upper body; 3-4 miles

Sunday - rest

Total: hopefully around 19-23 miles

****************************************************************

Track update....

#1 ran a 5:40 mile and it was a bad day, which makes me laugh, because 5:40 miles are so fast, it's crazy that it can happen on a crappy dirt track and be a bad day. 

I spent most of Friday night/Saturday ALL DAY watching the Arcadia Invite live webcast. Yeah, I was watching #1's team run - but mostly, I was killing time waiting for the girls 3200 Invite, which had a loaded-as-heck field, including my favorite, Sarah Baxter. 

We got to see Baxter run during XC season, and she is incredible - she was undefeated in XC in her high school career, until NXN, where she came in third, with Alexa Efraimson taking the win there.

She's never been an outstanding track runner, but she was undefeated at the 3200, until a few weeks ago when a local girl, Bethan Knights, tied her at 10:07 (fun fact, we raced Knights' team on Thursday, and she took it super easy, and still blew our distance girls away). 

So seeing Efraimson, Knights, Baxter, and a slew of other fasties lined up was really fun. 

Until Baxter didn't run. 

WOMP.

Rumor has it she's fighting some stress reaction or something, so I certainly hope that it was the right call for her and she heals up quickly, but damn. That would have been a fun race.

I told #1 she has to qualify for CIF so we can have an excuse to see Baxter run before she graduates. That's not weird, is it?