Wednesday Workout Update

Last week I ran a total of three miles - and it felt fabulous!  I took several days off after the half marathon to let my legs and feet recover...planks and stretching were all that I did until Saturday, so by the time our little group met at 6:30 am, I was feeling good and ready to go.  I ran with Amy, Julia, Arlene (from our knitting guild - we discovered that she's a runner and invited her to join us) and her adorable dog, Remy.  Now that we are finished with the long distance training, Amy and I are working on our goal of running a 5K without stopping, so we tried out 3:1 intervals.  I surprised myself by being able to keep up with it for the entire run - considering we ran longer than normal going uphill (and into some pretty strong winds, too), I thought for sure I'd end up walking part of them, but I managed to run each interval in its entirety.  We had a great time, chatting (naturally) the entire run - Jeff said that when we came in, everyone looked so happy - I think it was a combination of running with good friends plus not running such a long distance.  Ahhh, the off-season.  I love it!

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Along with my goal of getting back to running without doing intervals (at least for the shorter distances - I may still do them for longer runs), the other thing I am determined to do this year is to get my body back to not hurting so much.  I know having a strong core will help me with running, and to that measure I've been doing planks regularly.  But I didn't realize, until I read a great article in the March 2014 issue of Runner's World magazine, that having strong glutes is another really important aspect when it comes to running.  I'm a literal person - to me, running involves my feet and my legs.  According to this article (The Whole Body Fix - not surprising that it caught my eye as the author has been dealing with a hamstring injury for SIX YEARS), you can easily have an imbalance in other areas of your body if your glutes aren't working as hard as they should - and it makes sense to me, because I kept wondering how in the world did I manage to get a hamstring injury when I wasn't doing anything excessive (i.e. I wasn't sprinting or jumping a hurdle when it happened).  I think I was just making it work harder than it needed to be and ended up overusing it each time I ran, and eventually that hamstring cried uncle and quit on me.

So as of a few days ago, I started doing the exercises shown in the article (you can see them here).  And down the road, I may look into doing some sessions with a trainer/join a gym (Planet Fitness is going to open up here soon, yay $10/month memberships!) so I can continue to strengthen my body.  I want to be active for the long haul, and I guess my body is telling me that I can't do just one thing and not expect it to rebel at some point.