One Good Mile

It's fairly easy to get into a workout slump where I either don't work out at all or don't work out enough or hard enough. That's where I feel like I've been for the past week or so. What's amazing, though, is how quickly things can turn around. It only takes one good workout, even one good mile to get me back on my feet and excited again about racing and working out.

I just had a workout with Jared that did just that. He described it as something to do with how Gerard Butler trained to play Leonidas in 300. While I'm sure it's a modified version of that, it was challenging nonetheless. Also, in designing it, Jared took into account my streak goals. The idea behind the workout was that we had four types of exercises. In this case, they were pull up jumps, sit ups (for my streak), side push ups, and kettlebell swings. Our goal was to complete as many of each exercise as we could and then move onto a cardio intermission on the treadmill, elliptical, or rowing machine. After the cardio, we'd move onto the next exercise. The goal was to complete 300 of any combination of the four exercises. This seems a little confusing. Here's an example of a round:

21 pull up jumps - 21 total reps
400 meters on the elliptical
50 sit ups - 71 total reps
400 meters on the treadmill
26 side push ups - 97 total reps
400 meters on the rowing machine
50 kettlebell swings - 147 total reps
400 meters on the treadmill

And so on and so forth until the total reps reach 300. The key to finishing this workout quickly was doing the 400 meters on a treadmill whenever possible. It's the hardest of the three, but definitely the fastest. It takes entirely too much time to complete the same distance on an elliptical machine.

After finishing my 300, I ran my mile. I did it in 7:30. Granted, it's not the fastest I've ever done and it was on a treadmill. But considering I'd already done the bulk of the workout, I was pretty happy with it. It made me excited about my streak and excited about the NYRR Gridiron on Sunday.

Another bit of good news: today I got an email saying that I made the Indoor Tri Championships! Woo hoo!