Spring Training: Week 5

Spring Training posts document my training for the Run the Bluegrass Half Marathon on March 30 and my "A" race, the Wisconsin Marathon half, on May 4.

The week, in training:

Monday: 4.1 miles, outside
Tuesday: 4.78 miles; outside
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: ZWOW 31 (a.m.) + 3-mile run (p.m.)
Friday: 5 miles, intervals; treadmill
Saturday: ZWOW 22 + TurboFire 30
Sunday: 9 miles, long; treadmill

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My inclination is to use this sentence to wax on about the complexities of the weather but as I've done that time and time again, I thought I would spare you. Rather I will say this: Mother Nature threw me for a loop last week. A real figging loop. We had two gloriously warm (for January) days followed by another Arctic blast. And when I say blast, I mean it - wind gusts of 30 mph and just pure blusteriness.

I'm pretty sure I just made that last word up. Go ahead Merriam Webster, add it.

Anyway, back to the running ... the weather really messed with my schedule. I had been running indoors during the week, allowing me to quality control my quality runs. I did hills and intervals with set limits that didn't allow me to quit. On the weekends, I head outdoors with Denali. It was what it was, and I was settling into the groove. Or at least I had gotten in the habit of sleeping in a sports bra and shorts so I could hit the treadmill by 5:30 a.m.

With shorts-worthy temperatures, though, I knew I couldn't pass up the chance to pound the pavement ... even if it meant ditching a scheduled hill workouts. Long-time readers, or maybe even new ones (waves hi), probably know that I can be a bit stringent when it comes to following a schedule and I can get down on myself if I miss quality workouts or cut them short. And you might expect me to go on about how I'm going to suck it at Run the Bluegrass for missing the workout. But I'm not. Not this time.

I'll go ahead and spare you the annoyance of asking why and tell you that I know that other areas of my training are helping with hill work - specifically lunges and deadlifts. Today, alone, I did 100 lunges as part of ZWOW 20.

Rather than get boring and pretend I know things I don't, I'll tell you that I engage my hamstrings when I run on an incline just as I do when I perform lunges and deadlifts. My butt, too. (For real info: Read this.)

It only seems advantageous then to strengthen those hamstrings when I'm hanging out with Zuzana or doing BODYPUMP to help prepare for the Lexington half in March. I am no expert but a month+ of RAW and too much time on YouTube have introduced to me a number of variations on those exercises. These are my favorite and, again not as an expert, I think it could be worthwhile to pick two or three, incorporating 3 sets of 12 in regular resistance workouts.

• Alternating backward lunges
• Reverse curtsy lunges
• Weighted lateral lunge
• Propulsion lunge (explosive movement helps to build power; cue to 3:10 for demonstration)
• Single-Leg Russian Deadlift (Zuzana likes to add a squat with it) 
• Single-Leg Deadlif to Shoulder Press

Just a quick note - if you do a traditional deadlift, stick your butt back as you tip at the waist. I've seen some pretty wonky ways to do it when I teach BODYPUMP. So wonky I can't even explain it.  I just don't understand why you don't want to show people what you got.

Happy training.