A day late

While I didn't get around to blogging about #Janathon yesterday I did get my workouts in. Yes, plural. I'm looking to shake things up and get back to strength and speed training in earnest.  The reason I didn't write yesterday is because it was the 2nd anniversary of my mom's death and I was trying to keep busy doing things in order to try and not mope around dwelling on it so much.  Her death and my father's within a year of each other (they had been divorced since I was 5) both of heart failure while in their 60s is certainly one of the driving forces that keeps me working out.  Granted I'm not a smoker, never have been and they were both heavy smokers since they were teenagers but heart disease does run on both sides of the family so there is a genetic factor.

First workout yesterday was another kettlebell workout from Pumps & Iron (yes again!) after doing the Truckin' Runner bicycle crunch challenge for a warmup. As I wrote on fb and twitter afterwards it totally kicked my ass and I'm feeling it today. I did make a couple of substitutions, the windmills were sans kettlebells and I did mountain climbers instead of lunges because I knew I would be running later and lunges can sometimes put undue stress on my joints.  Loving the russian twists and I made more of an effort to "snap" my hips and plant my feet on the swings. Some of the moves I started with my lightest bell then moved up to the heaviest one on the last 2-3 tabata intervals. Seeing some improvement already and I'm already considering buying a heavier bell plus I need to buy a second of one of the sizes I already own in order to do some of the moves.  If anyone has any tips on doing the windmills please let me know, a huge part of it is my inflexibility so I realize I need to start incorporating more stretching (I HATE stretching).

Trying to lose the pudgy belly!

2nd workout of the day was the club run which was supposed to be a steady 6 miler and instead became the Speedy Lampposts workout. OUCH. My legs were feeling fatigued from earlier and it was surprisingly warm (and humid)--I'm thinking it was in the mid 40s Fahrenheit/6-7 Celsius.  I ended up doing 5 of the posts which was 3 more than I expected to do. As I've mentioned before part of this workout includes going full-out on a long downhill as well which is not as easy as what it sounds. I was already feeling nauseous on the first part of the speed work and by the time I got to the bottom of that damn hill it was a battle to not throw up. I was so overheated as well that I ended up taking my long sleeve top off and tying it around my waist for the remainder of the run. Don't worry I was wearing a vest (tank top to the US readers) underneath so no one was exposed to the horror of my bare stomach again, that is reserved for the readers of my blog, lol.

Click to enlarge

Last night's splits

Around mile 3.7ish is where the full-out downhill run starts

All in all I'm happy with how the workouts went but today will definitely be a very light day to rest up. Not decided if I will take Elsie out for a short run later or if I will opt for a walk with both the mutts instead. I do think that airing up the new balance ball should count though, sheesh that took forever with the pump they included.