Things I Am Loving

Recent Workouts:

Sunday – 8 miles (ran 7, walked 1)

Tuesday – Yoga

Wednesday – 4 miles (run/walk) + yoga

 

Things I am loving right now…

Yoga

I have been doing a lot of yoga at home lately.  Since the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving, my hamstrings and IT band have been horribly tight.  I’ve been trying to take it easy on the running since I have a super hilly half marathon this weekend (scared out of my mind) so I have been trying to do yoga in place of BodyPump. Sometimes I just love following the PDF Pose Guides from YogaDownload.com and listening to my own music.

Updated Gym Membership

My gym offered a new membership where you can bring a guest anytime and they can even go to classes! I think this is great and I will definitely be trying to recruit a few of my friends to BodyPump. I’m also excited for my friend Andrea to visit over Christmas so she can force me to go to my first Zumba class and she can try pump 🙂

Foam Roller

Sorry for the old summer picture, but the passion for my foam roller is still just as strong.  I’ll forget to foam roll for a few weeks and then get back on it and remember why it is so amazing.  It has really helped my tight IT band and hamstrings this past week.  I’m hoping that by getting on it a few times a day until the race this weekend will really help me out and prevent injuries.

Yogi Tea

No, really. Why is this tea so good?? There are about a million different flavors of Yogi tea (I discovered my Yogi tea passion from Jen @ Peanut Butter Runner). I’ve tried the Chai Black, Green Tea Kombucha and others and they are always great.  I’m trying to cut back on coffee during the week and drink hot tea when I am cold and need to warm up!

Reading

I can’t help it. I’m reading it for the third time and I love it. After seeing the movie twice when it came out last week I had to re-read it again.  I really need to read The Hunger Games before the movie comes out in the spring! I will start up my last grad class this January-April and I won’t have much down time to read.

Claritin

After running the Hershey Half Marathon with a sinus infection, my doctor told me I probably had allergies and that is why I kept getting sick over and over.  She told me to start taking Claritin and it has been wonderful ever since.  After a week or so I felt a million times better and I can definitely notice when I go a few days without it. Why did it take me so long to realize sinus infections all the time were from allergies??

Running Faster

Sometimes I forget I have only been running since the Summer/Fall of 2009. When I first started running, it was a challenge to hold a 10:00 min/mile pace for a short period of time.  As I ran more, I started to be able to run in the 9:30-10:00 min/mile range (last fall) and was SO happy.  Even though I had a few disappointing races this past fall, I have been able to get my shorter distances in the 8’s and that is so great for me.  Even the first 8 miles of the Hershey Half Marathon this past fall were all around 9:20, which is way faster than my first half marathon (Pittsburgh May 2010) that was an 10:13 pace overall.  After killing myself at the Turkey Trot I later realized I was running around a 7:50 pace for half a mile to make up for the crowds and tried to hold onto a 8:20 pace overall.  Even though I fell apart and walked, that was huge for me.  I’m excited to push myself with shorter/faster distances once this half marathon is over this weekend.