February 27th: A Change of Schedule, A Change of Pace, A Change in Outlook

Ahhh...that felt good. I drove down to WOW today, rather than hit the belt at PF, and did some solid strength training.

I almost didn't make it. Carol was running about 3 minutes late this morning, and we got to the bus stop at 6:25. And of course, this was the one day the bus driver was actually on time. By 6:30 or so, we realized the bus had already come, and I started heading to the high school so Carol could get on the transfer bus. But we actually caught up to her first bus en route, and she was able to get on when it stopped to pick up another kid. That probably saved me 5 minutes -- and likely saved my workout. Thanks, Carol!

I need to add a challenge to this stuff.

I moved about 3/4 of the stack on the adductor.

I won't bore you with all the details of my sets, but I worked on core, arms, legs (particularly glutes) and hips. I also learned that a few moves I used to think were really tough are getting to be a bit easy, and I'm going to have to figure out how to push harder. In particular, bosu-ball crunches with a dumbbell and kettlebell jugglers just weren't that challenging. I'm also getting into the hip abductor and adductor machines, and I'm pushing pretty good weight there. I keep reading tons of stuff about how injury prevention starts with having strong hips and glutes.

But the real story of today's workout is how refreshed and invigorated I felt afterward. I think a big part of the training blues I've been having of late has been the monotony -- get up at 5:30, have coffee, make Carol some breakfast, warm the car up, put on gym clothes, get Carol on the bus, go to PF and hop on a treadmill. Day after day after day. Just breaking out of that routine really cleared the mind a lot. Even mid-workout, I couldn't believe how much I was enjoying myself.

I'm thinking this might be something to consider more frequently. I'll have to figure out how that impacts my fairly rigid training schedule -- I have it set up the way I do to maximize the value of rest days. And this week is sort of an outlier, since I won't be doing anything again until Sunday, when I run the half. Nonetheless, it feels like the right thing to do, more for my mental endurance than for my physical training.

As I mentioned above, two nice, full days off before the half on Sunday. Yay!