cheryl

Well, today I made it back to my group for the first time since early December.  It was great to see everyone again, although it was dark so I'm not sure how much I saw.  It was great to talk with them again and get caught up on things.  I'd spent the last several weeks cross-training and running very short  intervals, just trying to get my form better and mainly trying to retrain myself to feel more relaxed when I run.  It's a slow process but I think I'm getting there.  I had been carrying a lot of tension and tightness in my shoulders and upper body which was making it painful to run, so my goal for the past several weeks was to retrain my muscles to feel relaxed automatically.  I found out today I still need to think about it, things are not automatic yet, but it is getting better.  I ran 4 miles with them, and then when we got back to where the cars were I decided to stop because I didn't want to have too much fun my first time back.  Except for some slight soreness in my shins, it was a good run.  Even the snow and wind wasn't too bad.

Personal training day, form and strength work.  It was fun as always.

Ok, so I got up about 4:30 to go running with the group, went out and got my newspaper and saw that it was a red day as far as air quality goes.  I think I was just looking for an excuse to go back to bed, because I convinced myself I didn't want to run in bad air, and that's what I did, I went back to bed with the intention of working out later.  Well, "later" never seemed to really come.  I did do 15 minutes on the stationary bike, plus I played a little church basketball tonight.  I ran extra hard in the game to make up for my earlier laziness.  I play basketball mainly just to practice fast running, how we do is secondary.  Maybe that's why we lost by 4 points, I need to make winning the priority.  Or maybe we lost because the other team had an almost professional sharp shooter on their team, so to only lose by 4 was really a victory in a way.

I got up early--4:45 and went to the Rec Center and  to Lisa's class.  We spun, we run, we kick boxed, we jumped, we lifted weights.  I like her class because I get in positions I rarely ever get in.  I use muscles that normally lie dormant.  Hopefully that will have keep me more in balance.

I met some members of the group at 7am at a park in Bluffdale.  Michelle N. lead us in a run of the Bluffdale 10K.  This was the longest I've run in about two months.  I was pleased that I was able to keep up and the pace of an average of 8:40 didn't seem too difficult.  I left after that, most of the others went on to run the Bluffdale 5k.  I drove to the hill by the Daybreak Temple and ran some sprints there.  Trying to do more hills to become stronger.  Overall, it was fun running and I felt pretty good afterwards.