Distance: 2 miles
Pace: 9’15/mile (19:12 total time, moderate effort)
Location: campus gym, treadmill
Today I had a goal to do 60 minutes total of cardio in addition to my bonus leg day as a part of my fitness challenge. For my warmups lately, if I run I’ve been doing interval runs at a moderate pace. It’s amazing how consistency and leg training peels seconds off your pace over a short time. My rest speed for the intervals used to be in the 5mph range and then I’d up it to 6.5mph for the work intervals. Today I did a 5 min warmup at 6.0mph pace and moved right into intervals with 6.0-6.5 rest speeds and 7.0-7.5 work speeds. Felt the same as before but I was moving faster. I always keep the treadmill incline on 1% grade when I run to simulate the effort of being outdoors.
After the warmup I got my leg workout done (hit 145 on the squats today! BOOYEAH that’s more than my bodyweight!). I did a few other standard leg work exercises as well then it was time for cardio round 2. I had 40 minutes left and planned to do an interval workout on the stairmill. Basically I did 10 minutes of stair intervals increasing the speed every minute or so and then did 100 ab movements. For abs these days I mostly do in & outs and full situps (military style). I’m avoiding oblique crunches and using plank movements to tighten that area mostly because I’m not interested in having bulky obliques. Let me tell ya, having to hop on and off of the stairmill to do ab work is both a blessing and a curse. If you’re using the stairmill right then you’re not using your hands to support your body weight (it irks me when people are on there leaning on the rails…you’re definitely not getting the full benefit of the workout when you do it that way…slow it down and use your hands only for balance and trust me you’ll feel the difference!) Anywho, if you’re using the stairmill correctly and not holding on, your abs are definitely engaged to keep you balanced. So combine the excitement that you feel from getting a break from climbing stairs to insane amount of soreness your abs are about to endure for 100 reps of situps/crunches/in&outs/etc… Totally tough.
I need to start wearing my heartrate monitor so I know how much I’m burning during these workouts. I don’t trust the heart rate monitors on the machines and feel like their grossly underestimating the burn. (Maybe they aren’t but I won’t know until I start strapping on my polar).
I’m hoping to be able to wake up early enough in the AM for a 3 mile jog…we’ll see though I’m pretty tired.
OCD Runner 
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