It's Workout Season

It has been brought to my attention (thanks, mom) that I have picked up a few nasty habits this fall. The first being hot chocolate. Turns out, referring to fall as Hot Chocolate Season rather than Perfect Running Weather Season or, more importantly (depending who you ask) Football Season has had a rather negative impact on my eating habits. Whoops. It started with me ordering hot chocolate to warm up from the inside at football games, then turned into me discovering they make a most heavenly mug of the stuff at the bakery next to work, and next thing you know my attempt to cut out coffee has turned into a terribly unhealthy swap. Tasty, but unhealthy nonetheless. And in my experience, eating unhealthy leaves a sluggish feeling I'm none too fond of.

Secondly, all this sleeping in on weekends and spending the rest of the day watching football all day isn't helping either. I'm still in my pajamas past noon on away game days even through I wake up half a day earlier during the rest of the week. My long runs have fizzled to 5k distance because I don''t want to miss the game. My whole body is feeling the effects of my limited running and getting restless, again.

After being inspired by what I read in The Sports Gene I decided it might be a good idea to give training like a competitive athlete a try. Reading that book was just the kick in the pants the highly competitive part of my brain needed to get back into it. Two-a-days worked back in high school, why not now?

My next step was then to break up the week. As a runner I would happily do legs day every day and completely abandon any sort of upper body workouts but that might make gymnastics a bit harder than necessary. Instead I split it up. On the days I run (historically being Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday) I plan to also make it into the gym for a weights intensive arm workout day.

After my injuries I had traded running for weight lifting completely and I started to really love squatting. Being able to track my progress from week to week in terms of the weights I used increasing was equally as satisfying as watching my mileage increase. All my work in the gym payed off and the squats helped strengthen my knees and hips so my running is no longer suffering from runners knee the way it used to! Now it's time to combine the two and get the best of both worlds.

On Non-leg days I typically go to gymnastics but now need to make sure I'm getting in an extra legs session before I go. And so begins Two-A-Days.

 I'm considering this next week (through Thanksgiving) my trial run before beginning "for real". This way I'll be able to fix any kinks that may appear. And still have some flexibility with the upcoming holiday. I'll be posting the workouts I do so you can follow along if you like.


Tights: Zella
Shoes: Nike Flex TR