A New Record & New Shoes!

Oh my goodness! I won AGCO’s Christmas photo contest! I had a lot of fun with the whole experience and was so happy when the voting finally ended and I had a solid lead. I thank my new friends at AGCO for sponsoring the fun contest and I’m looking forward to receiving my prize in the mail. (The prize is a limited edition book entitled "The Proud History of AGCO.")

Now that the most exciting news is out of the way, let’s review my so-called “resolutions” for the new year:  calendar managment, fiddle, and exercise...

Resolution #3: Calendar Management
So far, so good on this one. I’ve had some LONG days, but in addition to my job, I’ve been able to get in all the things I actually enjoy and look forward to, like my daily workouts, my weekly fiddle lessons, and several basketball games (I’m the scoreboard operator for all the Junior Varsity and Varsity Girls and Boys games at my alma mater, South Central. I really enjoy this gig; it’s a lot of fun!)

Resolution #2: Fiddle
I’ve actually been practicing outside my lessons. The practicing has been fairly minimal, but it’s better than the end of 2009 when I didn’t even open my case outside lessons from early November through the end of the year! I’ve been reviewing songs I previously learned and just learned a new song in last week’s lesson. (My fiddle teacher plays by ear and doesn’t actually read music, so reviewing previously learned songs is important, since I don’t have sheet music to look at! I have a digital recorder that I use to record my lessons and to keep a “reference copy” of each song I’ve learned to aid in my paperless fiddle playing.)

Resolution #1: Exercise
I had my monthly session with my personal trainer, Cheryl, yesterday. When she reviewed my charts, she seemed quite impressed with my commitment. The average person must fall off the wagon over the holidays, because she was wowed by the fact that the only day I took off during the holiday season was Christmas day. So far in 2010, I’ve only taken one day off.

She was also impressed with the progress on my running. Since my last visit with her, I let go of my interval structure and have just been running as long as I can before I would do a walking interval. The best I had done up until today was to run a solid 25 minutes during my last 4.5-mile run. During my chat with Cheryl yesterday, I challenged myself to run continuously through my next 3.1-mile run, and today I did just that!! I started out at 6.5 mph for 15 minutes and then gradually slowed to 6.0 mph; I ended up finishing in 29:41…a new personal best!!

Cheryl also commented positively on my strength-training progress (Yes, I realize I’m paying her and she better give me positive feedback, but she really does seem genuine!), and she mixed up my strength workout yet again. For the next month my strength workout will be the most challenging yet, with mostly free movement stuff, like with cables and dumbbells and benches and such. I’m looking forward to getting acquainted with the new routine! (We’re also upping my long run to 5-miles in the coming weeks…yikes!)

When I first started adding strength and cardio to my non-running days, I dreaded the elliptical machines…the first time I used one I didn’t last two minutes! Well now I’ve built up the necessary leg muscles enough that the elliptical is no problem at all. Now I have a new challenging cardio machine… December 26th was Christmas at Cardinal Fitness, and they got a bunch of new elliptical machines, bikes, and some AMT machines. “What’s an AMT machine?” you ask. It’s brutal, but I plan to conquer it eventually. It moves how you move (or so they say)…you can use it like a stair stepper, a pseudo-elliptical, or you can really stretch your legs on it and pseudo-run. But it really is hard! Check it out; it even looks scary:

I should wrap this post up for now, but just one more thing… As of today, I’ve logged 189.5 miles since I started this thing more than 4 months ago. I read that for maximum comfort and support, the life of your shoes is around 200 miles, so I long ago decided that my 200-mile reward would be new shoes. Well, I had time yesterday so I went to the Nike outlet and got the next version of my current running shoes, the Nike Structure Triax, this time the Triax 12. I figured my Triax 11s didn’t let me down, so why even try anything else on? I encountered another pretty good deal on them too, probably ‘cause the 13s are out now! Anyhow, since they’re my 200-mile shoes, I won’t be wearing them until about a week from now when I get past the 200-mile mark!!

Seven weeks ‘til my Disney World 5K…perhaps next time I find the time to blog, I’ll devote a post to how excited I’m getting about that!!