I haven't taken a break this long since I started writing regularly and I feel terrible! But then, part of the reason why I haven't blogged and why I have been feeling bad is also that my workouts have been really under par recently. The only thing I've really managed to do is keep my streak going, which isn't very hard now that I've gotten used to it. But that's going to have to change here soon because tri season is getting underway!
During my blog hiatus I traveled to sunny Miami. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'd hoped to do a tri there the weekend before last. Alas, it was not to be. I didn't find an affordable way to transport my bike in time. I thought I would just rent a bike there (even though the road bikes were all rented out for an MS 150 race) and sign up but even that didn't work out! I ventured from our hotel to South Beach in search of a bike shop that I'd sought out who rented hybrid bikes. Got there, rented a bike, and, since that was taken care of, figured I should sign up for the tri. Big mistake not doing it sooner. It had sold out not hours beforehand. Once again, I made myself a victim of my complete lack of planning and foresight.
On the bright side, I got to do all my streak runs on the beach. Or at least partially on the beach. When I returned the bike to South Beach, I ran the four-ish miles back to the hotel. It was a nice change of pace and I pulled onto the beach for the last mile of it. One thing about Vibrams that I never really considered was how convenient they are to bring places. They take up hardly any room. The downside is that they need to be washed VERY frequently to avoid offending everyone within a five foot radius with the stench they can produce. Did I learn this the hard way? Yes, yes I did.
But back to the story. Running on the beach is not easy and I was pretty grumbly when I first got into it. I mean, yes, I chose to run on the beach but I don't think one can ever be prepared for how difficult a task it is. I had barely gotten accustomed to it by the time we had to leave! On a two of the days I only did the requisite mile, but one of them I did a whole 5k on the beach. All while being chased by a thunderstorm. It was epic. Between maintaining the streak and riding the bike around Miami Beach for a day, it was actually a much more active vacation than I would have had otherwise. So I guess that's something.
In other news, I'm a proud spokesperson for a recovery beverage called reGen! I'll be posting much more regularly in general, but about this in particular. If any of you are local, train, and are interested in trying this out, let me know! Additionally, if anyone knows how to create ads independent of Google AdSense I would love to know how. Firstly to promote reGen, but secondly because my AdSense account was suspended awhile back (thanks, Google).
Oh, one more thing. I decided to get more active with the whole twitter thing. Up to this point, I'd only set one up for myself. I'm still skeptical of it, but willing to give it a try. My twithandle is cheaptriathlete (obvi).
That's all I have for today. Get ready for a busy summer season!
Showing posts with label barefoot running. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barefoot running. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Pillow Fight, Quidditch, and Awesome Run
I enjoy a good pillow fight as much as the next person, but I was not prepared for what awaited me on Saturday when I headed down to Union Square with six other members of the quidditch team. Feathers and fuzz swirled in the air; it was mayhem! Wielding pillows, we entered the fray to find a diverse pillow fighting crowd. Many people wore pajamas. Two guys even had on full body spandex suits, one green, one blue. And anyone wearing anything even slightly conspicuous dramatically increased the likelihood that they would be whacked. I'm definitely glad Jared convinced me to abandon my favorite post-quidditch locale, Toast, in order to broaden my horizons.
Practice was pretty decent, too. We warmed up by doing five repetitions of this massive hill in Riverside Park. For any of you Plano Boot Camp readers, I'm sure this workout would have been a walk in the park. Admittedly, my hillwork has been lacking in recent months, so I found it to be quite challenging. After the hill, we went straight into the usual out and back Dino Park run, which is slightly over a mile (thereby taking care of my streak requirement for the day). We then went straight into scrimmaging and did conditioning afterward. As usual, Jared had a fiendish circuit workout planned. He calls it Animal Crackers, though I know fearless boot camp leader T calls it Animal Kingdom. I'm including a diagram below. Please enjoy my super advanced Microsoft Paint skillz.
We did fifteen minutes of that. Most of it is fine for me, but the crabwalk KILLS me and it takes me forever to do it all the way down the field. OH, and we had to combat these things, which makes crabwalking and bear crawling quite painful if you're not careful:
Stupid spiky balls. To be fair, I was mostly able to avoid them.
So that was Saturday. Yesterday I did a 2ish mile run that was basically the Phoebe loop with a little distance added in. That was good, but today was even better. The NYRR are doing a free run series each Monday in April which consists of a short run and then a lecture or short class on a specific topic. today was stretching, but that wasn't the best part. The best part was that I, along with an older gentleman, led the fastest pack on the first half of the run! In my vibrams! DOUBLE WIN. The run was technically supposed to be 3 miles, but they didn't actually measure it out, they just said we'd go fifteen minutes running north and then turn around. Since we were running significantly faster than 10 minutes per mile, we probably ended up doing close to 4 miles in that thirty minutes and then a total of almost five with the warmup and cooldown segments. It was fantastic. I didn't keep up the same pace for the entire run, but we were definitely flying for the first half.
The stretching part was really good, too. I'm terrible about remembering to stretch and doing it properly and long enough, so I found it very helpful and informative. I'm also really looking forward to the next few Mondays!
Practice was pretty decent, too. We warmed up by doing five repetitions of this massive hill in Riverside Park. For any of you Plano Boot Camp readers, I'm sure this workout would have been a walk in the park. Admittedly, my hillwork has been lacking in recent months, so I found it to be quite challenging. After the hill, we went straight into the usual out and back Dino Park run, which is slightly over a mile (thereby taking care of my streak requirement for the day). We then went straight into scrimmaging and did conditioning afterward. As usual, Jared had a fiendish circuit workout planned. He calls it Animal Crackers, though I know fearless boot camp leader T calls it Animal Kingdom. I'm including a diagram below. Please enjoy my super advanced Microsoft Paint skillz.
We did fifteen minutes of that. Most of it is fine for me, but the crabwalk KILLS me and it takes me forever to do it all the way down the field. OH, and we had to combat these things, which makes crabwalking and bear crawling quite painful if you're not careful:
Stupid spiky balls. To be fair, I was mostly able to avoid them.
So that was Saturday. Yesterday I did a 2ish mile run that was basically the Phoebe loop with a little distance added in. That was good, but today was even better. The NYRR are doing a free run series each Monday in April which consists of a short run and then a lecture or short class on a specific topic. today was stretching, but that wasn't the best part. The best part was that I, along with an older gentleman, led the fastest pack on the first half of the run! In my vibrams! DOUBLE WIN. The run was technically supposed to be 3 miles, but they didn't actually measure it out, they just said we'd go fifteen minutes running north and then turn around. Since we were running significantly faster than 10 minutes per mile, we probably ended up doing close to 4 miles in that thirty minutes and then a total of almost five with the warmup and cooldown segments. It was fantastic. I didn't keep up the same pace for the entire run, but we were definitely flying for the first half.
The stretching part was really good, too. I'm terrible about remembering to stretch and doing it properly and long enough, so I found it very helpful and informative. I'm also really looking forward to the next few Mondays!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Weekend Recap
Can't ever complain about a weekend, really. This one was especially good in the weather department. On Friday it was 74-75 degrees outside and, while I had to work for most of it, I really enjoyed my walk to lunch. And even though I didn't get to physically enjoy it as much as I would have liked to, the promise of the beautiful weather to come was enough to put a bright spin on the whole day and weekend. Friday's run was a Phoebe loop sans Phoebe. She seems to have gotten worse on runs, so I haven't been running with her as much as I used to.
Saturday was quidditch day, as usual. We started out with a warmup run in Riverside Park from about 108th to the Dinosaur Park, which I believe is around 96th and back. Conditioning was back in full force courtesy of Jared. The first post-warmup activity was four rounds of suicides down half the quidditch field. Next came 10 minutes of circuits which consisted of the following:
-10 burpees (an exercise in which you drop to a crouch on the ground, kick both legs behind you, do a pushup, jump back into a crouch, then jump vertically off the ground)
-15 squats
-20 mountain climbers
Afterward we moved to crab walking and bear crawling up and down the field. It was the type of Jared-devised workout that I haven't had in a long time. Needless to say, I'm quite sore today. In a good way, of course. The conditioning was followed by an hour to an hour and a half of quidditch-playing, which is always a good workout and a good time.
Earlier in the week I had a comment on one of my posts from Ruben, who started a triathlon-centered social networking site called TriumphTriathlon. Head on over and sign up if you're a triathlete looking for a growing community! If you happen to be a triathlete in New York City, you can join the group TriumphTriathlon in New York City and maybe group workouts or outings could ensue.
Lastly, the NJ Ultra Festival. It took place this weekend and we were aiming to run the 50 miler. Alas, we weren't ready for it and had to postpone for later. Now it's time for me to find a few Road Runners races and a marathon for the spring.
Saturday was quidditch day, as usual. We started out with a warmup run in Riverside Park from about 108th to the Dinosaur Park, which I believe is around 96th and back. Conditioning was back in full force courtesy of Jared. The first post-warmup activity was four rounds of suicides down half the quidditch field. Next came 10 minutes of circuits which consisted of the following:
-10 burpees (an exercise in which you drop to a crouch on the ground, kick both legs behind you, do a pushup, jump back into a crouch, then jump vertically off the ground)
-15 squats
-20 mountain climbers
Afterward we moved to crab walking and bear crawling up and down the field. It was the type of Jared-devised workout that I haven't had in a long time. Needless to say, I'm quite sore today. In a good way, of course. The conditioning was followed by an hour to an hour and a half of quidditch-playing, which is always a good workout and a good time.
Earlier in the week I had a comment on one of my posts from Ruben, who started a triathlon-centered social networking site called TriumphTriathlon. Head on over and sign up if you're a triathlete looking for a growing community! If you happen to be a triathlete in New York City, you can join the group TriumphTriathlon in New York City and maybe group workouts or outings could ensue.
Lastly, the NJ Ultra Festival. It took place this weekend and we were aiming to run the 50 miler. Alas, we weren't ready for it and had to postpone for later. Now it's time for me to find a few Road Runners races and a marathon for the spring.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
ViiiiBBBBraaaaMMMMsssSS
Yes, I'm that excited about them. Not even normal capitalization rules can contain it. For the longest time I didn't think I'd ever be able to get into barefoot running. Then suddenly (approximately a week and a half ago) the idea popped into my head and, rather than thinking it's ridiculous like I normally do, I was actually really excited about the prospect of walking and running around almost barefoot. So I began looking around online and figuring out where I could get them, both online and in stores. I found a few websites selling them for $75-$80, but it was only one or two models. Not only that, but I couldn't try them on and I certainly didn't want to spend that kind of money and not be able to return them if they didn't fit.
I decided the best best option would be to get them from JackRabbit, the same store that organizes the Indoor Triathlon Series and put on the Shamrock Shuffle. Once you spend a certain amount of money ($150, if I remember correctly) and register with them, you get 10% off of everything you buy there. Considering how expensive running and triathlon stuff can be, it's a decent deal. And since I haven't spent too much money on running shoes in the last couple of years, I decided to take the leap and buy a pair. This is what they look like:
I went for a short run in them and they were great!
I made it short because I thought it might be hard to run in them at first. It wasn't as hard as I anticipated, but it will take some getting used to before I'll be able to do longer runs in them. I also worried that blisters and chafing might be an issue. They still might on a longer run, but today I had no issues. It could just be that the top part is designed enough like a sock that it's not as abrasive on bare skin as normal running shoes would be. I was also delightfully surprised to find that I seemed to be running faster. I'm not sure I was as I didn't time myself, but it definitely felt like it. Next time I'll time it to find out for sure.
I decided the best best option would be to get them from JackRabbit, the same store that organizes the Indoor Triathlon Series and put on the Shamrock Shuffle. Once you spend a certain amount of money ($150, if I remember correctly) and register with them, you get 10% off of everything you buy there. Considering how expensive running and triathlon stuff can be, it's a decent deal. And since I haven't spent too much money on running shoes in the last couple of years, I decided to take the leap and buy a pair. This is what they look like:
I went for a short run in them and they were great!
I made it short because I thought it might be hard to run in them at first. It wasn't as hard as I anticipated, but it will take some getting used to before I'll be able to do longer runs in them. I also worried that blisters and chafing might be an issue. They still might on a longer run, but today I had no issues. It could just be that the top part is designed enough like a sock that it's not as abrasive on bare skin as normal running shoes would be. I was also delightfully surprised to find that I seemed to be running faster. I'm not sure I was as I didn't time myself, but it definitely felt like it. Next time I'll time it to find out for sure.
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