Mary’s Workout: 10/18/10
I was browsing the archives of the marathon project, and was immediately flooded with memories of how exciting everything was. Signing up and beginning training now feel like a whirlwind - what I remember mostly about last year was a spring full of on and off injury, and not being able to run when the date of the actual marathon rolled around.
Now that mid-fall has rolled around again, it’s once again time to start thinking seriously about my training regimen for this year’s marathon. I should be starting official training in a couple months, but now’s the time to prepare my body for that training.
I’m now a year older, hopefully a bit wiser, and just as serious about getting finishing this marathon.
The year delay has done nothing but increase my desire to finish a marathon.
During the time I’ve been absent from blogging over these past 6 months or so, I HAVE been continuing to workout. Sometimes I’ve been running, sometimes I’ve been playing soccer…..no matter what I’ve always stayed very active, whether I’ve written about it or not.
Proof?
After an hour of lifting last night, I run two miles on the treadmill.
I finished two miles in under 16 minutes, with absolute ease.
I know what it’s like to be out of shape….to slack off a bit and try to come back hard. And I know how things would have felt if I’d not been in shape while attempting a two mile run at an 8 min/mile pace.
So I’m glad to see that I still have some semblance of a solid base to work from.
Seeing those old entries reminded me that I WANT to be better with this blog. So I’m making a commitment now. No popping in once a week (or once a month) to “recap” my workouts by attempting to recall what I’ve done.
I’m going to be posting it all here, one workout at a time, and posting with precision, accuracy and honesty.
That’s what you can expect to find, if you choose to stay tuned during these next 8 months. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be running 26.2 in Orange County in May 2011.
Here’s what I did last night:
I started off weight lifting with legs. I worked out my hamstrings, quads, hip adductors and abductors by cycling through four machines at the gym. I did three sets of each exercise, but varied the reps based on difficulty of the lift. Generally I shot for reps of ten, but if something was a bit too easy, I just added reps (up to 15) rather than upping the weight.
Next I did a quick cycle of torso exercises, working out my back and sides (sorry I don’t know the official name of the exercise I was doing).
After that I used the leg press (lying on my back and pushing 180 lbs of weight up with my legs). I did three sets of 10, and after each set I pumped out 15 calf extensions on the same machine. While using the leg press, I also did three sets of bench presses….with not much weight (10 lbs on either side of the bar, though I’m not sure how much the bar weighed).
Next I did reverse pushdowns for my triceps (20 lbs, 3 x8), alternated with bicep curls (12 lbs, 3x15)
Finally I did dumbell reverse flys (3 x 12 db’s) and lat raises (not sure if that’s the right term for what I was doing) (3 x 5).
Once I was through with all my lifting, I decided to go for a quick and easy run. So I hopped on the treadmill and ran 2 miles in 15:50.
And that was that.
