The streak still lives although my Fridays have consisted of walking and pushups for good measure.. The problem with this is we're then on to the Blind Onion for pizza and beer afterwards.. I suppose there need to be a fun life balance but this really kills my weekly progress.
Work has been so busy and home has been a little off which has zapped my energy for writing this blog but I'm going to get back at it even if I write lame things that aren't as entertaining sometimes.
The weather has provided some decent running days and Wally is always ready for an outing. We've worked up to five miles which is easy for him and he's still spry as ever when we return home. I'm feeling pretty good about my cardio fitness at a comfortable pace however, my my upper body and core is so weak. Last night I met Merry at LA Fitness for an hour long session of fun with May who teaches an excellent BodyWorks class. Sadly my body does not work as well as this May who is well over 60 and looks better than most of the 20 and 30-somethings desperately trying to keep up. In the beginning of the class she says its okay if you need to rest but there's no excuse for not doing your best. She not only leads us through a variety of poses I would never have thought to invent all the while counting, encouraging and yelling at us to get it in gear. Sometimes throwing in a threat about when we get older we should be stronger than we are today and more flexible. We need to work hard!!! She is amazing, when she told me good job after class was over I felt like a puppy getting a reward. Although I wondered if she threw me the bone just so I'd return... It worked.... 5:00am tomorrow I am getting up and dragging myself to her morning class. I hope this will be a nice way to start the day. After our session yesterday my shoulders, abs and butt are still pretty sore, hopefully hitting it hard tomorrow will do just the trick to loosen things up.
A note on flexibility or I should say lack thereof, I wonder how long one has to consistently stretch before you see improvement? I'd maybe just like to not feel my achilles are about to pop off when trying to do a stretch while seated. My legs are so tight, it feels I might just flop backwards at any moment from the resistence put forth by my hams and calves. The special highlight is when we're supposed to push our stretch a little further and I'm already at terminal stretch hold with nothing left to give just from a sitting positing. No elbows on the floor for me.
On stretching... One of the students in my college speach class claimed that ANYONE could do the splits within 10 days by following a proper stretching regimen. Granted, she was a gymnist and the regimen in question probably involved 90 minutes of hell each day, but I think stretching is probably one key that separates great/committed athletes from the pack.
ReplyDeleteI just discovered my mom's foam roller from pilates and I'm in the process of discovering new and horrifying levels of pain before my daily runs. But the reward is less pain while I'm actually running.