Saturday, April 17, 2010

XT

In the Army life, there are a wide variety of acronyms that are used in daily life. Once at an event, we played a game where you had to use as many acronyms (in sentences) as you could---the person who used the most won a prize. I won with the following, "On Tuesday nights, I drive my POV to the CDC, and then head to the FRC where I have an FRG meeting, serving as a POC for this group. We get free childcare, so I don't have to use my GWOT hours. Then on Wednesday mornings we drive to MPC where I attend PWOC."

And in my new world, the running world, there are just as many acronyms to learn. For example, there is PR (personal record), HRM (heart rate monitor), RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevate), and LSD (long slow distance). But today's workout I added in a little XT---cross training.

A lot of what I have been reading for running and exercise in general talks about how cross training is beneficial to the athlete. Lift weights and doing other types of cardio, other than running, keeps one from getting too burned out too quickly. It makes sense to shake things up, give life a little variety and keep from getting bored---which can certainly happen if you run on the "never going to take me anywhere" treadmill.

So this morning I headed to the gym to see how I could shake things up. I started by doing some leg weights, which included hip adduction and abduction, leg extension, leg curl, and calf raises. Those five exercises took about 20-25 minutes, so I decided to jump on the elliptical machine for a warm up to the run. I worked on that for about 1 minute (remember, this was my warm up period), and then switched to the treadmill for my run.

I started off, I was feeling good...not great....but I've been at the gym for about 35 minutes at this point. I think, "Hmmm, is this the day I finally finish another 5k?"

WHAM!

What?? What was that??

"Oh, hello, Wall of Exhaustion. I was wondering when you going to show up today."

Looking at my ipod, I've only logged 0.67 miles of this run. Ok, no long run today. My legs, especially after those calf raises, just can't take too much more. So I ran until I hit 1 mile, and then crawled back to my car. No matter how hard I work, I'm just not to the point where I can run more than 2 miles. I'll get there....someday....

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