An early morning workout …

Tuesday – 4 miles + Strength Training

• 4.13 miles, 46’ 50” minutes, 11’ 20” min/mile average pace, 145 BPM average heart rate
• Kettlebells – Fat Blast Workout (12 minutes)

What a great morning! I woke up at 6 this morning and actually got both of my workouts done before work. Today was my first day of running and strength training. It was also the first day of my new running plan. I read somewhere that when doing multiple types of training on the same day (i.e. running and strength training) the most important thing to keep in mind is which one is the most important for your fitness goals. Since my running is the most important part, I am going to focus on that when I do two workouts a day. With that being said, I changed into my running clothes as soon as I woke up. Even though I haven’t been running any distance more than 3 miles during the week, I felt confident that wouldn’t be a problem running 4 miles and adding my kettlebell workout after my run.

I headed over to the treadmill and started off with a five minute walking warm up. Since this was the first day of my updated running schedule, I chose do an easy run this morning. The Nike+ training schedule didn’t have any specific type of run assigned for today as I knew it wouldn’t be a problem. After my warm up, I increased the belt pace to 4.0 and started to run. I continued listening to my audio book, which helped me ease into my rhythm. Maybe I am too dependent on my headphones. I think I am still in one of those awkward places in my training where I haven’t quite broken through to my true “inner flame”. I found that it wasn’t too difficult for me to maintain my pace throughout the entire 4 miles. Hopefully as I continue to increase my weekly mileage, it will continue be effortless. I cooled down with a five minute walk before I started my kettlebell workout. Now I have been doing the Fat Blast Workout for about a month with my 8 lb. kettlebell. I have gotten so “comfortable” with it that I have been doing it twice in a row. According to Lauren’s plan, the workout for today is only supposed to be one time through the Fat Blast Workout, which is exactly what I did. Silly me actually thought that it would almost be too easy for me. Boy, I was wrong! Using the 15 lb. kettlebell took this workout to a whole new level for me. I was sweating more after this workout then I ever have before using kettlebells, including doing the 40 minute Sculpt & Condition Workout with the 8 lb. bell.

Immediately after the workout, I didn’t feel any soreness so I became worried that I didn’t get the right sized bell. When I asked my boyfriend about it, he indicated that I am probably out of the “conditioning phase” and into the “training phase”. I was utterly confused by this. He said that in the beginning I was conditioning my muscles for the increased physical activity, which means that I was more likely to be sore all of the time. Now, I am actually training and developing muscles so I won’t be nearly as sore anymore. I think that totally sucks by the way. He also said that I will know when it is time to increase the weight when I can fly through the workouts, which definitely didn’t happen today. When that happens, my muscles will have reached a point of stagnation. Later, I did a  search on the internet found that there actually three phases of fitness conditioning: preparatory, conditioning and maintenance. After reading several articles about this, I determined that I am probably in the conditioning phase because I am no longer asking my body to get used to regular exercise (the preparatory phase). Instead, I am trying to reach my desired fitness level. Of course, I am not quite sure what that is but I am hoping that I will know when I have reached it.