(Semi) Wordless Wednesday

After typing that title, who am I kidding? I can't post a blog and not write anything. My grandma jokes that I was the best baby - always quiet and now I never shut up.

My hubby is in Tucson for the Tour of Tucson (humongous bike race - 10,000 bikers on Saturday!). So he left yesterday and will be gone until Sunday. While I don't mind a night alone sometimes, 5 nights gets a little much. I had such a nice surprise though today when the doorbell rang and these arrived:

Guess he set up a house account with the local flower shop so that he can call them and just have them deliver flowers to me whenever he's in the dog house traveling thinking about me. I love him so much!

I went an picked up my race packet for the Turkey Trot. I know it's a bit early to get my packet, but I live about 40 minutes away from the race and getting it race morning is always a pain. I was halfway to the running store today after kickboxing so I decided to stop by. Holy bright construction cone colored shirts batman. But I like them! The turkey in the center is the kind a little kid makes with their hand. It's cute... they had smalls... I'll wear it! (I think of it as doing my part for the safety of myself during night time runs!)



So a lot of you have asked me what kickboxing is all about. Here's kind of a little run down.

• We usually start with a warm up - jumping rope, running around the gym with medicine balls, stations of lunges, squats, push ups, sit ups, mountain climbers and whatever hellish things they can think of to get our heart rates going (it doesn't take much for me these days...)
• After about 10 minutes, we put on our gloves. And we then proceed to punch the crap out of a bag that hangs from the ceiling. They tell us combinations - starting with maybe three punches and work until this combos are 5,6,7 punches and kicks (which is usually when people forget). Then we move to the next combo. We do this for about 30 minutes. In between some of the combos, we'll do push ups, planks, run laps, do burpees, do mountain climbers, etc. The gym looks something like this during this 30 minutes (I totally stole this from their website and no, I'm not in that picture)
• We then have a burnout set. It's usually some insanely hard set of combos and cardio.
• Then the last 15 minutes or so, we do weight/resistance workouts and tons of abs - they really like planks... regular planks, planks on a ball, planks with punches, walking planks, etc. Today for example, we did a rotation with a partner of planks and one arm rows, then walking planks/push ups and flies and then leg curls on the ball and push ups with a row.
• By the end of 55 minutes, I'm usually soaked, dead tied and ready to call it a day.

I LOVE IT! I decided to be uber athlete today since I've been feeling totally guilty for working out 7 hours this month total. I got on my indoor trainer. OH MY GOD! I literally thought that my heart might pop out of my chest. I was dripping wet in a matter of minutes and I looked down and I was averaging like 16.4mph. Wow... lost that fitness fast! I miiiiiight have some work to do on the bike!

Total random thoughts...

First off, thank you all for your comments about the running skirt issue. Glad to know that I'm not the only one with some real girl legs! Running Skirts is going to let me try one of their skirts and review it for everyone. Hoping that some other companies ( maybe) come to me asking me to review theirs as well so that I get a good comparison. :)

Second - so does anyone else think that October should have been names National I Didn't Train Much month? I mean wow... I looked at my training log. Now granted, I did a marathon and then enjoyed some down time and then got sick, but it's kind of pathetic. Okay, really pathetic. Here are the totals:

Swim - 0 meters. Yep you read that right.
Bike - 84.5 miles. Again, wow
Run - 63.8 miles (of which 26.2 was run in one day...)
Cross training - 4 hours (this is usually the elliptical at the gym movie theater)
Kickboxing - 3 hours

Oh well. I feel better and I'm back on course. I swam today for the first time since September and did actually remember how to swim so that was good. It was slow. And my lungs were burning, but I blame that on the kickboxing I did for an hour prior to the pool, and the cold I'm still getting over. Excuses, excuses.

Kickboxing is awesome! I'm trying to go 3 times a week. It's generally been only twice though. I literally get my butt handed to me on a silver platter every time I put those gloves on (and walk out wondering if I should be ashamed of my ability to work out at that level). Tons of bag hitting, but also squats, lunges, push ups, sit ups, weights, resistant bands, etc. Every class is different. Today we ended with 3 minutes of planks - 3 straight minutes. Yeah, I didn't make it through that. :)

Beach 2 Battleship half is in a week and a half. I'm super excited, but looking at my October numbers scares the poop out of me in terms of readiness. Maybe I'll be well rested and just have a kick ass race. Or I'll die. We'll see...

I received my two giveaway winnings in the mail this week. I'll post pictures soon. LOVE THEM! :)

Something new

First, wasn't the Ironman World Championship awesome yesterday? I had the live feed on all day and it was awesome. Congrats to everyone who raced... maybe some day I'll get there (most definitely through the lottery unless I want to race when I'm 80).

We're a week out for the Columbus marathon. It's funny how the mind works though - it's only a marathon. When did I get to the point when 26.2 miles is only a marathon. I guess it becomes that way when you aren't swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles first. I'm slightly nervous about it. I'd like to PR, which shouldn't be hard since I've had some piss poor marathon results in the past, but I don't know if I'll be there. I went out for an 8 mile run this morning and felt like poop. I tried to convince myself that it's because I'm in taper, but I think it's really that I'm just done with training! :) Oh well...

I am super excited though because I've been searching for something new in terms of training and I FINALLY found a kickboxing class that I can join. I don't want a fufu taebo kind of class, led by the likes of Billy Blanks. I want a good hour of all out pounding. I want a bag, and some sparing, and some of these...

I used to kick box back in the day (before I met Tom) and I loved it. When I moved in with him, it was just too far to drive back to the class and I've searched and searched for the last 7 years for something that was comparable to the butt kicking that I'd get a few times a week. Everything came up short. Finally, there are two places - one locally and one about 15 minutes away, that offer the beating that I'm looking for. I just have to decide which one I want to join. One offers classes 6 days a week, the other (and the closer one) is only twice a week, but is cheaper. Since I'm looking at it as cross training, I'll probably stay local and just hit it up twice a week.

I am so ready to punch and kick for a while and have actually some faces that will help with imagery as I'm pounding the bag! A little reminder of those who didn't treat me right!

Oh how I love cross training...