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?