Back to Speed Work

Today was yet another smoggy day in beautiful Salt Lake City. It's sad that such a beautiful place can have such bad air sometimes. It was also the first day of my kids' "Winter Break." I guess they can't call it "Christmas Break" because that wouldn't be politically correct. I had planned on going swimming at 6 in the morning, but when my alarm went off, I couldn't help but think, "Hey, wait, this is supposed to be a vacation day!" Sleep just sounded so much better than swimming at the time, and I ended up getting 2 more hours of it!

When I finally rolled out of bed, I got the kids all ready and we went to the gym. Mindy and Ethan were so excited because they never get to go to the daycare, and feel so left out whenever I talk about taking Elle. I got them all signed in and headed to the treadmills. I was a little saddened by the thought that the more I work out, the more they sit and watch TV. I wish childcare places didn't always have the TV on. I need to make sure I find active things for them to do as well as for myself.

I picked a treadmill looking out the window today, and I thought it was nice to be able to watch the cars drive by and look at the houses just like I would be doing on a real run. I warmed up for 10 minutes, and didn't quite do a mile in that time. UG.

Then I did .5 mile with the speed on 7.5 which is supposedly an "8-minute mile pace," but boy did it feel faster than that! It was so hard, I'm amazed I made it the whole half-mile without being rocketed off the treadmill! I only did .25 miles for the rest of my intervals, but I think I was able to do a little more that way. One more of those .5 miles would have surly killed me.

My whole workout went something like this:

~1 mile @ 5

.5 mile @ 7.5

.5 mile @ 5

.25 mile @ 7.5

.25 mile @ 5

.25 mile @ 7. 5

.25 mile @ 5

.25 mile @ 7.5

.25 mile @ 5

.25 mile @ 6

~.25 mile @ 7 (this was unplanned, but Foo Fighters came on and I wanted to run fast to it, 7 was a lot more fun than 7.5)

walk for a while...

At least I'm pretty sure that's how it went. It's hard to remember all the specifics! I did about 4 miles before I started walking, and I did it all in about 45 minutes. That doesn't sound like much of a speed workout does it? I just really had to go slow on the recoveries.

When I got done, I only had 15 minutes left before the daycare closed, and I really needed to take a shower since we were going to go strait to the library so I didn't do any ab work like I wanted to. I told myself I'd do it tonight, but I don't know if that's going to happen.

When we got home (at around noon), I was getting sandwich stuff ready for lunch when I reached up to open the cupboard to get plates out, and it was already open! The back of my hand hit the corner of the door really hard, and MAN did it hurt! I thought it would feel better after a few minutes, but I ended up having to do everything one-handed for the rest of the afternoon. Even at 5:00 when we went to the store to get stuff to make Christmas goodies, it was still hurting really bad and I couldn't really use it. I told the kids we'd have to make the treats tomorrow.

When Pete got home, he asked me if I'd taken anything for it. "Um, no." I hadn't even thought about taking anything. What would I do without him? I took some ibuprofen, and it's feeling much better now. It's still a little sore, but at least I can move it without wincing. I hope it feels better tomorrow, I'd feel really dumb if it was broken. That would surely put a damper on my new resolve to start swimming again!

I will get up to swim tomorrow!