Thanks for all your great comments on my post yesterday about how to stay healthy when you’re busy! If you haven’t already read the great responses, go check them out. Some awesome advice! One thing a reader mentioned that I forgot to include was to make exercise part of the journey! I try to walk everywhere I can, always take the stairs, and when I worked full time I used to walk during my lunch break, too. Some days I walked up to 4 miles! It was such a nice de-stressor.
Another one of the best tips from you all was that while planning is awesome, it’s good to remember to stay flexible, too! I completely agree. In fact, speaking of being flexible, I’m going to change up my half marathon training plan slightly! I originally had my three weekly runs runs scheduled for Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, but I’ve decided to make it Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday instead. My weekends are super active, between my Saturday long runs and Sunday usually involving some sort of hike or at least being outside/walking a lot, so I found that by Monday my legs were exhausted and NOT ready for another run yet! And on the contrary, by Friday I was wishing I could run because I’d had too many days off in between! So I’ll be making Monday my yoga day instead and pushing my runs to Tuesday and Thursday, still with a rest day on Friday and cross training on Wednesday. I think it will be perfect 🙂
So, with that in mind — yesterday I did an early morning speed workout at the UNC track!
It makes me so happy that the track here is baby blue, hehe. 🙂
My friend Jillian had plans to go to the track so I decided to head there with her because, as we discussed yesterday, working out with a friend vs. alone always wins out! Plus, she said she understood when training plans say things like “4×400”, and I wanted her to let me in on the secret. 🙂
I was always super intimidated by speedwork on paper because I never understood what it meant — well, it turns out it’s much easier than I thought! A 400 is just one lap around the track, or 1/4 mile. So when a speed workout says “4×400”, that just means do four laps around the track, for a total of one mile!
On Jillian’s speedwork plan, she was scheduled to do “6×400”, or six laps around the track (1.5 miles), at a very speedy pace. We jogged to the track (and home at the end) from her house, which is about a mile away, to give ourselves a nice warm up and cool down, and we also decided to add in an extra lap in between each speed lap to give ourselves a bit of recovery time. So here’s what we did:
- Six laps around the track (400’s) at a 6:30 pace
- In between each speed lap, do one slow jog/walk lap
We ended up doing a total of 12 laps, or 3 miles. It was a GREAT workout and flew by because it kept us entertained! It felt really good to stretch out my legs and go fast on the soft track, too.
We’ll be continuing speedwork every Tuesday morning and I’m excited 🙂 It was way more fun than just a simple run!
I’m off to school — have a wonderful day! And for those of you that are on Twitter, please join myself and my fellow Attune Foods Ambassadors for the first ever healthy living #attunechat at 12 p.m. EST! The chat will be hosted by Joanna and Carla and we’ll be talking about healthy living goal setting. I hope you can join us 🙂
