Weekly workouts: Half marathon training week 3 (11/24-11/30) + postpartum week 23

Considering this was a holiday week and we had lots of family in town, I think I did pretty well in keeping up with workouts. I ran a few less miles than I wanted to, but still managed to get a few good runs (and a race) in. My running and racing are both getting stronger by the week and I'm really thrilled with the overall fitness gains I've seen in a relatively short amount of time. I guess my body didn't totally forget what it's like to be fit.

This week I skipped out on Track Tuesday and used the Turkey Day Run (recap on the way!) as my speedwork session instead. I also ran a very soggy, rainy progressive run on Tuesday during lunch. And after missing BodyFlow the prior week (and paying for it with extremely tight leg muscles), I was happy to get there last week. If I could do BodyFlow every day, I would. It really has done wonders for my strength and flexibility.

I started another 21 Day Challenge for Change on Friday last week, too. Admittedly, the eating part was difficult over the weekend since we still had leftovers and I didn't want to throw them away. Fortunately, we also still had family in town to help eat those leftovers, so I didn't have to finish them all myself. Now that the relatives have left and it's back to regularly scheduled programming, my eating is also back to normal and the 21 Day Challenge is a little bit easier.

We had our first group HIIT workout on Saturday morning for the challenge. Yep, a HIIT workout before long run for half marathon training, but I survived. However, the next day I could tell it's been a few weeks since I've done a workout like that (thanks to my sore legs and arms). But while I was doing the workout, I was amazed by how much easier it was this time around than back when I did it in the summer.

Our workout was 15 minutes of as many rounds as you could complete of the following:

10 burpees
15 air squats
10 push ups
15 bicycle crunches

I sort of lost count, but I think I did about nine rounds, and it wasn't so bad. We started the workout with a warmup of a 200 meter run and a few other exercises plus a a 90 second wall sit, and we ended with stretching and 90 second planks. I didn't have any real issues with the wall sit or the plank, and I no longer feel like my core is falling apart at the seams. Although my arms did feel a little like wet noodles after I finished the workout. Need to keep working on that upper body strength!

My goal at the end of the last challenge was to run three miles and I did! For this challenge, my goal is still to run 3 miles (well, 3.1), but this time, I want to race them and hit sub-24 at the Cocoa Cup 5K at the end of December. And really, a PR wouldn't be the worst thing either, although I'm not sure I'm quite there yet. But that hasn't stopped me from putting a new 5K PR on my Christmas list (along with a new Mac, a treadmill, a paddleboard...hopefully I'll get at least one thing I'm asking for!).

The week in workouts

Monday: