Summer is upon us (although on the East Coast of Canada, some days you can’t tell) and that means beaches, patios, beer, BBQ, softball, beach volleyball and time spent with our shirts off.
Over the past 3 or 4 months I’ve been training like I always do; Lifting weights and no cardio. I play a lot of sports so I’ve always considered that my cardio when weight training. I HATE running and I HATE the olyptical and the bike and the rowing machine and the whatever other cardio equipment there is in the gym. Give me a ball and tell me to score somewhere and I’ll go for hours (that’s what she said) but tell me to get out on the road and run or on to jump on a rowing machine and pull that damned rope back and forth, and I’ll tell you something else (and it probably won’t be polite!).
Right now I feel like I need to lose about 6-8lbs (that last bit of fluff I’ve got around the bellay) and unfortunately I know that the only way to do that is to start pounding the pavement, so yesterday morning, I started running before work. Before my motorcycle accident, I use to run every morning with Coco. We’d do about 3.2km in 13 minutes. I’ve never been a fan of long distance running and I was a sprinter in high school, (I basically have no slow twitch muscles and only have fast twitch muscles which means a lot of power, very fast, very hard but not for very long) so I like to run as hard as I can, as fast as I can and get that shit over with. The reason I run in the morning is because if you’re looking to burn fat, running in the morning on an empty stomach is the best way to start your day. It’s when your insulin levels are the most stable and it sets the tone for the rest of your calorie burning day.
Since my motorcycle accident, I haven’t really been able to run. I found this out when I started to try and train for the Blue Nose Marathon and I couldn’t get past the 3.5km mark due to the pain in my hips and back, which was quite frustrating as I made it one of my goals for the spring and knowing that I wasn’t going to attain it, really pissed me off. So yesterday morning, when I went for my first run in about 3 months, I wasn’t too optimistic about what was about to transpire. I ended up getting 2 km in before my legs felt like rubber and I did it in about 13 minutes. It’s nothing to brag about, but it’s a start and that’s more cardio than I’ve done in 6 months! I ran again this morning but only got 1.75km in (in 10 minutes) because poor Coco can’t run like she use to and we had to stop (poor girl is getting old!).
My goal is to run every morning for the summer but ideally I’d like to drop the “fluff” in two weeks because I’m playing in a Beach Volleyball tourney in Fredericton July 17-18 and then one in PEI July 24-25. I need to look good on the court (and for the ladies), you know!
Wish me luck!
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