Saturday, January 5, 2013

Getting back on the horse...or into my sneakers

I'm not one of those people who goes to the gym on January 1st. a) I hate the gym in January, everyone makes a resolution to work out more, they pack the gym, and they're gone by Valentine's Day. b) I'm probably hungover.
I let myself have a few days off after returning from being in Indiana for the holidays. First, I went to Miami for New Year's, was drunk for 72 hours, slept about 4 hours a night, went to an insane NYE party, and had endless amounts of coconut shrimp and pina coladas. Then I got home and needed two full days to recover from this mess:


Absolutely no clue who the guy kissing my cheek is. Hey, I never said this was a healthy living blog! In fact, the first iteration was a baking blog.
Anyway, I finally got my ass to the gym after work yesterday. I had a long run planned for today so I did some strength training. Lots of glute bridges on a swiss ball, squats with a kettleball, core work, push-ups, and some weights. I used to be great about strength training before I started running three years ago. Over the past two years, I've really slacked on it and I miss being really toned! I've also gotten injured a few times and I think some of that could have been avoided with strength training. I didn't push too hard yesterday because I didn't want my legs to be really tired today, but I did enough to still feel it in my arms today. I love that pain :)

I did NOT want to get up this morning. I accidentally stayed out after 1 last night (I didn't notice the time!) so I was really tired. I've figured out at this point how much I can drink and still be able to run--verdict is 3 drinks, cocktails are best, no more than one beer-- so that wasn't a problem but the lack of sleep was. I came so close to canceling but knew I needed to get out there and meet my friends. So I ran over to the Intrepid on the Hudson River to meet up with Fiona, Steph, and Jocelyn (new running buddy!). I had left my distance sort of open ended and was thinking I'd do 12-13 (I've run twice, not more than 4 miles, since my marathon on 12/8). From 44th Street, we ran downtown past Battery Park and the Staten Island Ferry, then up the East River under all of the bridges. When we got to 23rd Street, I decided to stop running because that was 10 miles and my knee (IT band) was really bothering me. Jocelyn wanted to walk too, so I stayed with her until I got to my gym, and went in to stretch. I was really happy to meet Jocelyn because she lives near me and I need a close running buddy to get me back into the habit of getting up at 5:45 to run before work-I've been lazy lately!

I'm hoping to do an easy 4 and more strength training tomorrow, but at least the past two days have made me feel like I'm getting back on track. Which is good because last night I signed up for a 10K in Prospect Park at the end of January (there's hot chocolate at the end and you keep the mug!) and the DC marathon (yup, decided on the full). Also in the next few months I have the DC Cherry Blossom 10 miler, 21 miles in Big Sur, Cape Cod Ragnar (ultra team!), and the Brooklyn Half (plan to register). Man, racing gets expensive!
How was everyone else's first week of working out in 2013? What kind of goals did you set for the year?

2 comments:

Laura said...

Oooh I was thinking about doing the Brooklyn Hot Chocolate 10K! I did it last year and we all went to brunch after; so fun. The hot chocolate was also INCREDIBLE. You are motivating me to sign up now :)

Happy New Year!

Shaya said...

Great! Let's all make brunch plans then :)