Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Love is in the air

I guess love WAS in the air. But I'm going to do a Valentine's day post anyways since it's always been one of my favorite holidays. Thanks to my friend's new found obsession with Parks and Recreation, I'm looking forward to Valentine's Day and a Galentine's Day for next year.

Anyways, instead of thinking about all the things that I love about running, I made a list of all the things that I would to have happen.Then, I did things that would bring me closer to my loves.

1. I would love to be able to run faster. 
I know that goals are supposed to have measurable numbers attached to it, but I just would plain love to run faster. For now, I would like to get my runs under 9 min/mile pace, but I'm sure once I reach that, I'd want to run even faster.

To achieve this, I decided to do a short tempo run. I haven't done one in a while, so I planned to go for 2 miles at tempo (8:30/mile pace) with the first and the last mile as a warm up and a cool down. I sort of just pulled that pace out of nowhere. It just seemed like a nice number.
Success! 
2. I would love to be able to run injury free. 
I took an extra care to foam roll all parts of my leg after the run. And no knee pain! (Knock on wood)

I also took a schwaggle opportunity to buy myself a pair of Valentine themed compression socks as a gift to myself. I can be my own Valentine if I want to. 
Unfortunately my legs will not be this skinny when I wear the same socks, but they will be well compressed. 

3. I would love to improve my core strength. 
I hear that there is a thing called a core that can make me speedier. One of my New Year's resolution was actually to do a longer plank. So for the first time in months, I tried to hold a plank. 
This is the sad state of my core. I can't even hold a minute plank. 
I will definitely be working on this.

That's pretty much it for my would love to list. Here's a picture that sums up the rest of my Valentine's Day. 
Somewhere, we lost the memo that it was Valentine's not Halloween.  
Hope you guys had a wonderful Valentine's! Are you guys into planks? If not, what other core workouts do you do? Also, thoughts on compression socks. Do they work? 

7 comments:

  1. I hope you had a great Valentine's Day!

    I LOVE those compression socks, and yes they work! I always put them on after a long run and then proceed to sleep in them haha.

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  2. I have never tried compression socks. Let me know if they work. But I have held an 1-minute plank. Once in my life! Apparently I have an amazing core strength :-P

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    1. Haha. I always think that one minute is a super short time. But it seems like forever when I'm holding a Plank.

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  3. Those compression socks are awesome! The model has some serious chicken legs going on, ha!

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  4. Wow! With tempo in your routine, I bet you are going to be seeing some new speeds very soon :)

    Love the socks, and the photo of you two !

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    1. I hope so! I would really like to be faster. Your PRs are so fast! I would kill to run a 5K in under 20 minutes.

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  5. Love those compression socks!!!! And don't worry. That chicks legs are tooooo skinny. Where are these muscles that she is compressing?

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