Monday, August 12, 2013

Back in the saddle

Last week did not go as I planned for workouts.  I did get to extreme sculpt on Monday and yoga on Wednesday morning.  Getting runs done was harder than I expected flying solo with hubby at Army training. I didn't get any short runs in last week. In addition I fell behind on the full body challenge last week. I'm managed to stay on schedule with the squats, but the full body challenge fell by the wayside.  Saturday I was finally able to get a run in.  This run was faster than previous 5 mile runs, but it definitely hurt being the only run I got in last week.  It probably didn't help that I didn't hydrate as well as I should have Thursday and Friday. Lesson learned.

It's really easy to get bogged down in what I should/could have done better, but I'm learning how to accept what happened and move forward. This week will be better.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Weekend Recap & Challenge(s) Accepted

Being an Military Spouse (in my case Army Wife) means sometimes you have to be commander-in-chief of your house for a couple of days/weeks/months while your partner/spouse is doing military things.  This time around it's only for a short time. For me, it also means I have to get creative on when to do workouts when the dog needs to get walked and our toddler needs everything (and sometimes at once).  To meet all of our needs, I nixed my long Sunday run to do a 4 mile walk with the two of them.
And we're off

Four legged friends need exercise too and they both enjoyed the fresh air on a beautiful day.


The fun part of walking with a dog is you never know what adventures await you.  For example, the gaggle of geese on the path.

Geese + dog = needing all your arm strength to keep doggie away
My pace must have been a little fast for her, because at 3 miles doggie decided she was done with the walk.
Over it.
I had to coax her to get home so our last mile took a little longer than I planned but everyone got some exercise.

And now the challenge...
There are a lot of challenges popping up for August.  One group of friends are doing a full body workout challenge so I said I would join them, when another friend asked if I wanted to take on a squat challenge with her. After looking over them both, I decided to combine the two.  I was on schedule with the squat challenge but was already 3 days behind in the full body challenge so I decided to combine Day 1 and Day 2 on Friday and do Day 3 on Saturday.  

Day 1 & 2 combined (Friday):
35 sit ups
13 crunches
13 leg raises
23 second plank
21 push ups
55 squats

Day 3 (Saturday): 
25 sit ups
10 crunches
10 leg raises
15 seconds plank
12 push ups
60 squats

Sunday was a rest day on the challenge and today was 70 squats (Day 5).  Things I learned today: don't do squats right after drinking coffee. No bueno. My stomach was not happy for the rest of the day. 

In addition to the squat challenge, I'm challenging myself more by trying different things in my cross training.  I went to extreme sculpt at my gym tonight (I did not do the full body challenge today) instead of my typical body pump class.  It was extreme alright.  We did at minimum 60 pushups & dips in addition to squats, rows, etc.  I left there feeling like I was going to throw up, but stronger. I'm going to be sore tomorrow (I already feel it now).  It might be hard and seem borderline impossible in the moment to try something new, but you may discover something about yourself in the process.

What would you like to try?