Running - Is It Consistency?

Um, duh, yes.

I manage to forget that whenever I have a hiatus from running. I'll start running after a break and feel like I'm not doing well when I can't run faster than a 12 minute mile. So sometimes I'll get frustrated and give up on running because I feel like there's no point and that I'll never improve.

Because I forget, again and again, that consistency is key.

When I run on a regular basis, I get better at running. Period. So easy to state. So hard to maintain!

For the last three weeks, I've managed to get three runs in per week. Not a huge number of runs, nor a large quantity of miles, but at least three runs between Sunday and Saturday. Ideally, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are the days that I'll run, but last week I ran Thursday, Friday and Saturday after my ankle was hurting a bit on that Tuesday.

I did run yesterday, so week four of my running streak has started off on a good foot. I ended up with some faster times last week, but yesterday I was just going for slow and steady because I was very sore. The run became more about the mental effort to keep running rather than the physical effort to run more quickly. I mean, I could stop at any time. There is literally nothing forcing me to run; just my own stubbornness to push past the pain.

Yesterday's run was pretty hot though. It's starting to get warm enough that I do not want to be running around noon. That's how my schedule is set up right now though, to do a run on Tuesdays and Thursdays during my lunch hour. I'm not sure how I might go about doing an early morning run with my current routine.

Other than being too warm for my taste, it was a beautiful day for a run. Blue skies with just wispy streaks of cloud for character, bright, warm sun, flowers perfuming my path and new, green growth everywhere. The lilacs are starting to bloom. I try to get a spray of lilacs every year, because they're my favorite.

I will be bumping up my weekly runs to four times a week, starting next week, as long as I finish my three this week. I'll still keep the distances short. So far, I've been doing a little over 2 miles on my weekday runs and trying to run longer on Saturdays (though one Saturday I ran just over a mile to keep the streak alive on a day I really didn't want to run). Three plus miles on Saturday will be supplemented by 3 plus miles on Sunday - both of the days that I can run early, before the sun rises if necessary.

I'll see if I can get some consistency with 4 times a week, and take it from there.

Scouting Trip

Ambrose and I went for a drive yesterday. We wanted to find out if our car would take us out past Twin Springs along the Middle Fork of the Boise River at this time of year. If it could, then we could plan for a camping trip over the weekend. If not, then we'd at least have gotten some time out of the apartment that we both sorely needed.

Just getting out of the house was rewarding, but the views made the trip extra special.  

Before we left pavement, we kept the windows down and I got some shots of the river. 

It felt good just getting out; I did wonder what we'd see once we got to the areas people tended to flock to. 

No water coming through the spillway at this time of year. 

I don't know what a 'normal' Tuesday afternoon in April would look like on his beach, but people did look like they were making good faith attempts at social distancing out in the woods. 

More well-spaced beach goers. 

Sheep Creek had a good flow going where it joined the river. 

The pictures don't really do it justice. 

I'm sure this hot spring has a name, but I don't know it. 

All I know is that the water is delightfully hot, deep enough to submerse myself and it was absolutely what I needed. 

I don't like wearing bras, but I was glad I decided to wear this one since the hot spring stop was completely unplanned. 

Ambrose and I watched the river flow by for a while here. 

Partly cloudy, neither too hot, nor too cold. It really was a lovely day, and I could have stayed so much longer than we did. 

Hanging out near a fire pit. 

Stealth selfie with Ambrose (stealthie?). 

The store in Twin Springs is closed, but there are clearly some people living there. 

We left around 4 pm and got home a little after 6. Even though it's supposed to rain on Saturday, I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to go out, find an isolated spot and spend the night this weekend. I need a night outside.

No Real Equipment? No Problem!

Well, I've been working out from home for a while now, and I've mostly settled on my workarounds. I do not have any dumbbells or kettlebells, and certainly not a barbell and plates. I don't even have room inside my apartment to jump rope, so I've been doing a lot of hopping and jumping instead. It's been tricky, but I've been getting my sweat on almost every day.

This is the workout space. Where the "magic" happens. 

Of course, no magic can happen with that rolling chair in the way. It gets moved to a different location and the blanket is put on the carpet to prevent rug burn - yes, I have gotten rug burn from working out on carpet before, no fun!

This classic folding chair could be used for chair dips, but I haven't actually used it yet. But the moment I need it, boom, a place to do chair dips, elevated push ups, and, if I'm feeling daring, even step ups (I am not that daring). 

This step stool, I will use for step ups. Not box jumps though, there's just not enough space for my feet. It's 18 inches, so a shorter step than I'd be using at CrossFit, but more than the alternative (the alternative is 0 inches). 

I'm the kind of person who would love to have her own personal fan at CrossFit. Well, now, with working out from home, I can finally realize that dream. This fan is dedicated to blowing directly at me, at whichever speed I want it to blow. It is the best part. 

Many year ago, before I was at my current job or my current apartment, I wanted to lift more weights, but I didn't want to pay to join a gym. So what did I do? I bought some concrete and filled various size cans with the mixture, along withe some chains so the links could stick out. Technically, I can use these like dumbbells or kettlebells. I mean, kind of. They only weigh about 4 pounds each though so I don't really like using them. Too light. But they look heavy. 

These are twenty 1 pound sandbags. I got them when I bought a weighted vest. The vest itself was pretty shitty, and I ended up getting rid of it. But I kept these little babies. They are useful for loading up a backpack for a training hike, and now they are also useful for working out from home, but not by themselves. 

They're better with a container, like this Nalgene bottle, which holds 7 of them. It's still a pretty light weight for a dumbbell, but it has the added difficultly level of having a very large grip. 

At first, I thought I could only fit 6 of them, but after I did a workout, the motions had cleared more space inside the bottle, revealing room for one more. 

Of course, this little backpack can hold all twenty - or any number of them, if I want less than 20 pounds. I can pretty much treat this like a sandbag and do cleans and overhead presses, or I can put it on as a weight vest. This backpack usually has more straps, but I took them off so they would stop thwapping me in the face while I worked out. I'm debating removing the shoulders straps, but they've come in handy for some movements, so they stay for now. You'd think that being away from the gym would mean that I wouldn't be getting any hand tears, and I'm not - on my palms. I did manage to wear the skin off of the last knuckle of my middle finger using this backpack for ground to overhead movements. I'm skilled like that ;)

Now, I don't have a barbell. But I do have this thingy. It's a bar, kind of heavy, and it has some rings on the ends that allow me to attach my homemade weights (or any weights that I can get a caribiner on). 

It's not a lot of weight, maybe 15 pound total between the bar and the cans, but the instability of the setup adds a level of challenge to movements. Especially lunges. I almost lost my balance a couple of times doing 100 walking lunges with this across my shoulders.

One of my greatest laments about my current living situation is the lack of a pull up bar. We can't exactly hang one in a secure fashion when we're renting, and Ambrose is convinced that the door frame ones will either break the door frame or break me by falling at an inconvenient time. But I did figure out a way to get some pull ups in. 

Routine Update

Well. Last week, I was getting settled in to a new routine of working out at 7 am and I was so happy at how I had adjusted to the new schedule and it was working for me.

So, of course, things had to change.

Enough people complained about the 7 am zoom workout time that they moved it to 6 am. I hadn't even thought of complaining about 7 am! I just set about adapting to it. Silly me!

But 6 am felt worse somehow than 5 am. See, when I go to a 5 am class, I'm getting up at 4:30, drinking a yogurt drink and heading out to get my sweat on. I'm back a little after 6, which gives me time to eat and shower before getting dressed and ready to leave for work at about 7:30 am. 10 to 15 minute bike ride to work, then 10 to 15 minutes chilling at my desk before I start working.

With working from home, I had a pretty good system all set up for 7 am workout. It was working. I was starting to feel comfortable. But then I had to adapt again. So. New schedule.

Alarm goes off at 5:30 (which means I'm not getting ready for bed until 9, bonus); I get up, have my yogurt drink and prep for at-home workout. After the workout, I sometimes do an additional tabata or some technique work, then shower, then eat, then get ready for work. I left out the tooth brushing step at least once last week, but for the most part, I'm getting used to this. Universe, please, no more workout schedule changes for a while?

Arbor has also started offering some additional classes in the evenings. I don't normally do evening workouts, but I have so far done the stretching & trivia class and the core class, and I'll probably keep doing them. It's an extra workout for my day, and I don't feel like I'm paying Arbor for nothing. Although, I would pay them for nothing for as long as I could afford to in the hopes that they come back when this is all over. Even though a Zoom class isn't the same, and I'm not getting to do a number of the things that I love doing, and am used to doing, it gets me moving in the morning, and that's super important right now.

I have slacked off on the athlete challenges, but I might jump back in. I've been feeling extra tired and run down the past couple weeks. Getting out of bed in the morning to work out is not exactly what I want to be doing (sleeping all day sounds nice), but I'm getting it done. And I always feel better afterwards.

Work from Home Routine

Well. They closed all the gyms in Idaho. I figured it was only a matter of time. But, I have the best CrossFit box, and they have started offering classes over Zoom. Which is weird, but also awesome.

I had done a couple of the at home workouts from Arbor on my own last week, but my first Zoom class was on Sunday. I didn't have my camera activated for that one, because my husband had turned our camera off by default to prevent spying. And, while I could see the advantages of not having everyone see my weird little living space and what I was doing when I couldn't quite do the movements, I also missed out on getting live encouragement from the coach since he couldn't see what I was doing. I've enabled the camera app for now.

That Sunday class was at 9 am, which is a time that I usually would be working out so that was fine. But the weekday times are quite a bit different from the usual selection of classes. I can't do a 5 am class anymore (though I could still do the workout at 5 am if I did it on my own). It's 7 am, noon or 5:30 pm if I want to work out in a group.

That posed some challenges for my normal routine. I want to maintain my routine as much as possible while working out (and working) from home. That means working out in the morning, so I'm taking advantage of the "short commute" from home to home office and doing the 7 am class. But I'm not sleeping in (much). I'm getting up at 5 am, showering, eating breakfast before 6 am so the food has time to settle, and then joining the 7 am class. The class is a bit shorter than the normal hour, so I have about 20 minutes afterwards to do a quick rinse off in the shower, get dressed and sit down at my work desk.

So far, it's working. I'm getting inspiration and ideas from my fellow athletes as I see what their setups look like at home and I'm helping them, too. I think I got the idea of using a step stool for step ups from some post on Facebook, but someone yesterday morning hadn't heard about it, so for her, I'm the one who thought of it. It's a bit tricky to use the step stool rather than a box (very little space for my feet), but it works.

Another change that I'm bringing in with the new routine is frequency. Normally, I take Wednesdays and Saturdays off CrossFit and do a double class on Sunday. No more Open Hour on Sundays, so there's no way to double up. Instead, I'm adding Wednesdays in and making Saturday and Sunday optional (though I'll probably still do those because what else am I doing these days?).

Overall, I feel good about settling into the new workout routine. For exercise release during the work day twice a week, this week I'm staying at home still and just doing little workouts (trying to catch up on my Arbor athlete challenges that I missed being sick last week). Next week, I'm hoping for a run outside around my neighborhood during those times, but it will depend on the weather.