Let's Get Ready to Rumble.......

Gotta love Jock Jams.  More on that later in the post :)

So it's been a while since I've updated - oops!  Let's see... This past Thursday I still wasn't in the mood for running (still in the slump from being on vacation).  I knew I should do something, so I did Zumba.  I honestly wasn't looking forward to it, but once I was there and got into it, it was fun.  No Cupid Shuffle this time, but it's all good.  The A/C wasn't working well at the gym that night, so the room was like 81 degrees, with about 25 people dancing... Yeah, it was toasty!  Needless to say, there was a lot of sweat.  I'm weird and sometimes judge my workout by how much I sweat (yeah, I know, it's gross).  Well that night was an AWESOME workout, solely based on sweat ;)  As I was leaving that night, there was another class going on that was doing a lot of core exercises.  It appeared to be all the kinds of things you hate doing on your own- squats, lunges, abs, etc.  So I looked on the schedule and saw the other times they had the class just out of curiosity.....  there was one Saturday morning.

I had planned on going running on Saturday morning.  I had told Dee about this class, and she talked me into going to it.  If you're in Raleigh, you'll remember it rained like crazy Friday night/Saturday morning.  Definitely one of those mornings where you just want to stay in bed all day and be lazy.  It was veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy tempting!  But I got my butt up and went.

The class was in the basketball gym.  There wasn't music playing, which was a bummer, but I got over that ;)  Started off doing jumping jacks and suicide sprints.  I haven't done EITHER of those since I was in middle school gym class/basketball practice.  Wow.  Brought back some memories.  Then we did multiple lunge and squat exercise variations across the gym.  Did LOTS of crunches and isometric (planks) exercises.  It was tough.  Also, a lot of sweating going on!  That's all I can remember doing in the hour we were there.  I'm sure we did more, I just blocked it out of my memory ;)  I felt much better after the class was over because I was like, WOW, I just did that!  I felt like I had finally gotten over my hump of not wanting to exercise.  A nice little kick start!

After the class, I had this second wind.  Strange, I know.  Probably all the endorphins.  So I figured, why not go run?  I hopped on the treadmill and did 2 miles (intervals).  Then I did twice the amount of stretching I usually do because I knew it was coming based on the things we did during the class.

Well it didn't take long.  That afternoon the soreness kicked in.  Sunday morning I woke up, and initially I could not sit up.  My abs hurt that bad!  It hurt to sit down.... and get back up.  I haven't been this sore since swim team in college.  Whew!  I probably should have gone for a walk or something that day to loosen up my muscles, buuuuut I opted for a lazy afternoon instead.   Monday morning was a little better, and today I was fine.  I know it was worth it, but it sure hurt!!!!

I looked to see when her next class the lady taught was, and this week it unfortunately conflicted with other plans I had :(  Oh yeah, on Saturday, she came up to me after and introduced herself (apparently this class has 'regulars' because she knew all their names). She mentioned that she does teach some other classes and I should try those too!  I really like this teacher because she's a personal trainer, so she knows what she's doing.  (The class is kind of like a personal training session without having to pay extra ;).  She pushes you to work hard, but isn't a drill sargent.   She has a fun personality, and is very encouraging.  It's exactly what I need!  I look forward to going to her classes twice a week.  I know it will make a HUGE difference in my running.

Last night I went to a class similar to Zumba.  It's like an aerobics dance class, except you build up to a routine over about 5 songs.  It's one of those classes that you put in the effort that you want to get out of it.  I didn't go all out, because I was going to run 2 miles after the class. And I actually did!  Wahoo!

Today, I went to another one of her classes.  It's called Butts, Guts, and Guns.  Great name.  It was similar to the previous class I had taken.  We did lunges, squats, abs, and did more upper body exercises than the other class.  This class had music!  The soundtrack?  The Jock Jams CD!  It was awesome.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about......  A lot of the songs are in the movie Space Jam... and it's a lot of the songs you hear at basketball games.

Here is a video of the songs (DEFINITELY worth listening to!):
Jock Jams Mix

Good stuff, right?!  I'm going to add it to my running list.  That particular song is a mixture of all of them. LOVE it.

Ok, that was a REALLY long post.  Sorry!  I'll do better about updating :)

Article

Dee found this article and sent it to me. The lady writing this blog must have read my mind because she has the same thoughts I do!  Well, except she opted to sign up for a marathon, and I opted for the half ;)

Marathon Training for Beginners / People Who Aren’t Actually “Runners”(Aside: OMG, I Just Agreed to Run The New York City Marathon. Am I Crazy?!)


.

Pictures

I had fun putting up pictures on that last post... so here are some more of people I've mentioned in the blog so far :)

Here's Beth (the one I'm running the race with) and I at a NC State basketball game:

Here's Dee and I at my graduation (she was a year older and came back from Atlanta to surprise us for graduation!):

And here is Dee and I (again) after Verb Day (aka field day for college kids)... Dee rediscovered this picture on Facebook and the caption was:  "This is us and our "did we seriously just run that much" face."  We played some bean bag game that required us to run up and down hill sprinting. It was ridiculous.

Day 3

So the plan this morning was to wake up and go run outside.  Well, I looked out the window and it looked like it was raining (there were some crazy storms last night).  Once I woke up a little more, I noticed it was just really cloudy.  I looked on my phone to see what the temperature was.  73 degrees.  "Oh, that's perfect!" And then I saw what it said underneath it... 94% humidity. Ummmm, no thanks!  It was one of those mornings you look outside and you can see the humidity.  Gross.

AKA... today was a gym day!  Did the elliptical for 45 minutes and went 3.5 miles.  I did the 'random' setting for the difficulty, and went at a faster pace for the first 30 minutes, and then slower pace for the last 15 minutes.  When I got off, it took a second to walk again after being on that machine.  My legs were jello for a few seconds.  I forgot that happened!

So I had some entertainment when I was at the gym - there was a guy who was on a treadmill on the row in front of me.  He was probably late 20s and he was a one of those big solid muscle guys.  I had my headphones in and all the sudden I hear someone singing really loud.  Like really loud.  Yep, it was him.   And a few minutes later, I look up and he's doing hand motions in addition to his singing (mind you, all while running on the treadmill - kind of impressive I must say!).  He did the "Rocky pose" for a few seconds and waved his arms around like he was dancing.  It was hilarious.  It was all I could do to not fall off the machine because I was laughing so hard.  And THEN he came and got on the elliptical next to me and I had to gain my composure so he wouldn't notice me laughing ;)  Good times.

Oh, and the new shoes were awesome :)

Oh, and one more thing - here was a conversation I had with Dee online this morning before I left:

me: yeah. but there are still clouds from the storm last night. its like 94% humidity. so i think today's goin to be a gym day

 Dee: yeah! You should totallly take a spin class :-)

 me: no spin class scheduled for todayDee: bummer! Well if you don't try it at least once during this training I will kick your butt

 me: yes ma'am.Dee: lol it is really good cross training! It's an awesome cardio workout but won't kill your legs like running

.....Looks like that is something I need to add to my to-do list!   I've heard crazy things about spin class.   So I don't know how I feel about this, but in order to stay on Dee's "good side", it sounds like it's gonna happen.  I'll keep ya posted ;)

Support

The night after I signed up for the race, I couldn't fall asleep because I kept thinking on the idea of  "What the heck have I gotten myself into?!"  This is so far from anything I've ever done before.  The first few friends I told that I was doing this, I prefaced them with:  "Are you ready to hear the craziest thing ever?"  Because, yep, that's about what this undertaking is!

I talked with both of my parents, and they were both excited and very encouraging about the whole thing!  My younger brother (who was a cross country runner) also got really excited when I told him.  So I know I will have their full support!  And knowing me, I'm going to need all the encouragement and accountability I can get!

Dee suggested I go online to active.com and fitnessmagazine.com to sign up for their daily emails.  I've gotten some helpful information so far, and it's only been a couple days!   It also helps remind me that I'm not alone in doing this.  Dee majored in exercise sports science in college, and then went on to get her master's in exercise and health science... so needless to say, she knows what she's talking about when it comes to this kind of stuff!  I asked her what is good to eat/drink after you finish working out.  Her response?  low fat chocolate milk!  Are you kidding me?! I LOVE chocolate milk!  It reminds me of being a kid.  So if anything, while I'm out running, I can just think about that nice cold glass of chocolate milk that is waiting for me when I get home :)

How it all began

June 30, 2011

So, I was talking with my one of my good friends, Beth, and she told me that she had just signed up for a half marathon in November of this year, and how excited she was about it.  Without a second to spare she then said, "YOU SHOULD DO IT WITH ME!"

Hmmmm.... So Beth has done two half marathons already, with a few smaller races along the way.  Each time she has asked me if I wanted to join, and I'd always say, "Nope!  I'm good!"  But for some reason this time, I was like well, let's think through this.  Maybe?

Let's flashback:  I was on my college swim team (Division III), and I was in the best shape I've ever been in.  I loved swimming so much (especially because you didn't know you were sweating!), and it was always fun to glide and float through the water.  Swimming is a winter sport, and so in the spring when the weather got nice, I would go for short runs to stay in shape.  After swimming every day from October to February, I was burnt out of swimming, so running was a good option to keep in shape.  One of my friends, Dee, and I would go workout together a few times a week.  It helped the motivation!  So that's when I first got into some running.

And then I graduated and continued to workout that summer while job searching.  That August, I got hired to be a middle school math teacher (I'm crazy, I know!).  Well, once school got going, I was exhausted at the end of each day (it takes a good month to get used to teaching again!).  So needless to say, the working out didn't continue.  I considered my dealing with 13 year olds all day enough of a workout!

So here we are almost 2 years later.  I haven't had a regular workout schedule in quite a while.

Here are the top 10 reasons I talked myself into taking on this adventure (in no particular order):

1) I need to get back in shape.
2) I will get to train with Beth, who is one of my favorite people :), so that entails lots of good laughs and accountability!  And she lives right down the road!
3) This half marathon in particular has a lot of live bands, which will make it all the more fun, and it's in a beautiful city!
4) Two of my other friends, Katie A. and Patty, are going to be running the same half marathon with me.  Also, another friend, Katie C., is running a marathon as well (and they are all here in town, so yay for more running buddies!).
5) I'll get to make some super fun playlists for my iPod, which means their might be singing along the runs.  Because I mean really, who doesn't like to jam out?!
6)  It will be a good stress reliever, and I'll get to spend a lot of time outside.
7) It will strengthen my relationship with God, because only through Him am I going to be able to do this.  I'm sure there will be lots of prayers along the way!
8) I am going to run it in honor of someone (I'll share that story later).
9) I'll get to buy sweet new running shoes.
10) It's something I've never done before, and I think it'd be quite an accomplishment!

I talked to Dee that afternoon (she was on the soccer team in college, and has now gotten into some running), and asked her what she thought about me doing this.  She said that I could totally do it, and that it'd be worth it!  Her next comment? "You need to sign up today before you talk yourself out of it!!!"

So that's exactly what I did.  I think I might be crazy.

There's no turning back now!