Running behind

Hmm I’ve been a little distracted lately, sorry about that.

To follow up on my last post, I met with my new personal trainer, and this is going to be great. For the summer, I’ll work with him on Wednesday mornings and then go to the group class on Saturday mornings. And what’s even better—I asked Kent to go with me the first time in hopes this would be something we do together. And he agreed!

I will say, the day after the first group class, we were both sore but not where we thought we would be. Since we’re both runners, neither of us expected to be sore in our quads but oh my goodness we sure were. We joked about trust falls onto the toilet . . . only we weren’t really entirely joking.

Jerry had told me I'm to work out four days a week, rather than six. I tried to negotiate to five days but he asked me to give him two months at the four days a week and see how I felt. My biggest concern with losing a day of working out isn't overall fitness, it's my running base. You see, to be ready to train for a full marathon, I need to be regularly and easily running more volume than I am right now. Still, I agreed to cut back for the summer and work on the strength. He's fine with me having active recovery days, so I can cycle (as long as I'm not doing 20 mile rides--oh hey, no worries there!). 

This week, I cycled on Sunday (7 miles), ran 5.5 miles on Monday, walked I'm not sure how far but close to 3 miles yesterday, today I worked out with Jerry and I will run probably tomorrow or maybe Friday. We're in a brutal heat wave and the "low" temperatures the next two days isn't very low: 76 and 78. Then Saturday I'll be at the group class.

He also had me bring in my food diary (very easy to do since I've been tracking with My Fitness Pal for a few years), and then laughed at my protein. Yeah, he wants me to up that considerably. And that's not easy as a vegan. I'm working on it though.

I mentioned that Sami and Jerry own this gym and that she’s a nationally recognized expert in exercise for cancer patients and survivors. At the first group class (which she teaches), she asked if I wanted to stick around afterwards as she and Jerry were going to make a short video of other cancer survivors who work out there for an upcoming conference. So I did! She tossed me a logo'd tee shirt and then I worked out with the rest of them while Jerry filmed. It was so much fun and even more, I felt entirely normal there. I wasn’t the only person who had to pay attention to scar tissue or what have you.

Here’s a photo from the end—Sami is in the front row on the right, and Ruth is their adorable dog.