7 Miles Never Felt So Good

I went to my third Crossfit class Friday after work, and I'm still feeling the burn today.

When I saw the pull ups on the board, I got a little nervous.  I have so little upper body strength that I was so afraid I wasn't going to be able to do them.  One of the coaches (who we realized that we went to college together and hung out with the same group of people quite a bit) put my worries to rest when she showed me the resistance bands I could use to assist me with the pull ups.  The better I get, the less resistance I will need.  I LOVE doing kettlebell swings, so those were no problem.  I seem to have pulled something in my lower abdominal area, so I did modified burpee box jumps, but I still finished the WOD.  My arms are still unhappy with me for the 50 pull ups I did, but they'll thank me later when I'm able to do more with them in the long run.

Sunday I had a 7 mile run on the schedule.  It's only 32 days until my first half marathon, and I want to make sure that I get as much running in as I can!  I did NOT want a repeat of what happened after my 6 mile run a couple of weeks ago, so I tried a different approach.  When I woke up, I had a Clif bar.  On my way to the trail, I downed a bag of Sports Beans.  I also had my trusty water bottle with Strawberry Lemonade Nuun in it.  I made sure to stretch good, and then I was off. 

I didn't want to burn myself out (and I'm a slower runner to begin with) so I took it easy, trying my best to use the 1:30/1:00 run/walk intervals that I had set on my Garmin.  I did pretty well with them throughout the whole run.  When I got half way done, I took an strawberry kiwi flavored AccelGel.  I've never tried this brand before and wanted to see if I liked it better than Gu.  I wasn't crazy about the flavor, but I did like that it wasn't as thick as Gu usually is.  The disadvantage to that is that I got it on my fingers with nowhere to rinse them off, so they stayed a bit sticky through the rest of my run.

I was really striving to finish in 1:30 or less, and I ended up finishing in 1:31, so not too bad!

Here are my splits from the run -

I know I didn't have any negative splits, and right now, I'm okay with that.  I was overall pleased with my run, and it was soooo much better than the 6 mile run I did a couple of weeks ago...I finished 6 miles in 1:24, and this time finished 7 miles in 1:31, so for me, that in itself is a success.

Once I finished I went to the water fountain, except they had turned them off for the winter!  So I went into the restroom, splashed some cold water on my face, and headed home.  I had a Clif bar in the car so I downed that as I drove to the house and had some Powerade once I got home.  I took a shower and threw on these fun compression socks my brother got me for Christmas -

I believe the brand of them is Red Lion, if anyone is interested...I know I had a couple of people ask.

I felt absolutely great after my run!  I was so relieved that I didn't have the nausea and chills this time, so I think I've finally found a long run routine that works for me.  Yay!

It was a disappointing night in football as the Falcons lost to the 49'ers in the NFC championship game, but oh well...what can ya do.  It had a similar ending to the SEC championship game between UGA and Bama.  I think the Dome is cursed...at least for any Georgia team.

I hope everyone had a great weekend and was able to sweat in some way, shape or form!

Until next time,

Jen