...miserable yet awesome.

Today was a LONG day… I worked in the morning, had lunch with some of my 4-H alums who were home from college for Thanksgiving, had a make-up fiddle lesson, assisted with the Area 4-H/FFA Crops, Entomology, & Forestry judging events in Plymouth, and then went to the gym to run. I just got home about 45 minutes ago and had a nice big bowl of Special K with granola on top for supper.

My run tonight was miserable yet awesome.
My trainer gave me some orders for mixing up my runs. Today I stuck with my walk for 2 minutes/run for 7 minutes intervals, but I did it on a program that incorporated some hills. Despite the new challenge, I ran HARD and accomplished a new personal best of 3.1 miles in 32:34, which is a pace of approximately 10.5 minutes per mile.

Sometimes I’ve joked that I feared my heart would explode, maybe I wasn’t too far off. Before I met with the trainer, I’d just hit “quick start” and go. Now I know how to enter my age and weight for an allegedly more accurate assessment of my peak heart rate. Well, tonight I was maxing at 176 bpm and my average was around 160. The max was solidly in the very top range on the little digital read-out, the range that might be the danger zone.

I’m not really going to worry about it though, because with my weight, it probably assumes I’m morbidly obese, ‘cause all those evil charts classify me as obese. What it doesn’t take into account is that I’ve been working out religiously for two and a half months now (with little change in weight) and that while yes, I have plenty of fat, I’m generally pretty solid. It’s in my ancestry…we’re just big people! Anyway, that’s why I’m not going to worry too much about my heart exploding…I think the digital read-out is probably assessing the rate pretty good, but I’m thinking my true peak heart rate is probably higher than what the machine thinks it should be. I’m not sure if any of this rambling is making sense, but I know what I mean!!

Tomorrow I get to do my strength training on my own, after my first strength workout with my trainer yesterday. Yesterday’s workout was fun, though as today has progressed, I’m feeling it more and more. I’m sure tomorrow won’t be as fun since my trainer won’t be there to encourage me and tell me to squeeze my abs. (Squeezing your abs is easier said than done. I’m working on it in my free time to get the hang of it!! LOL!)

One more thought before I stop rambling for today…this whole commitment to physical fitness is really starting to eat up a lot of my time, especially now that I’ve added strength training on my non-running days! Good thing I worked up to a consecutive days plan, otherwise I probably would’ve tanked the whole program early on. Now I’m two and a half months in, so I can’t back-pedal…onward and upward!!