400's...they sounded so easy!

Hey Peeps!

So it’s day two of ½ marathon training and I was blessed to wake up to a gorgeous (although windy) day outside (see picture to the right)! Normally I work during the days so even when it’s nice out I don’t really get to enjoy it, but luckily for me I have to close tonight and so I actually had a chance to enjoy the weather for a bit (although honestly it’s been about six months since I’ve worked a closing shift and so I’m not too sure I’m going to be thankful about it when I’m leaving work at 10pm).

Anyway, all weekend I was pretty excited about the idea of “Springing forward” (hee hee… I know I’m probably about the only person in the world who felt that way) since it means when I get out of work on a normal day it will now be bright enough to run outside (which I prefer over the dreadmill any day). Yet on the very first work day of daylight savings it poured all day and so I found myself at the gym, on a dreadmill (and I didn’t even get to watch my show since the TV showing it was all the way to the right and I was on the left side of the gym…see picture to left to see what I mean).

So today when I woke up and saw the sun I knew it meant I could get outside and for that I was truly excited. Granted my excitement faded about ten minutes into running 400’s…which was about the time I realized how tough they actually are! Now I’ve always been under the impression that a 400 is about a quarter of a mile...and I was also under the impression that if I ran three fourths of the way around my parents block that it would equal about a quarter of a mile. So that’s what I set out to do today. I would run three fourths around and then walk the last fourth before starting again. And there was even a point when I totally stopped short on one of my 400’s and decided that it meant I had to do that whole one again (Cause hey if you’re going to do something you might as well do it right!).

Well It turns out that the distance I was running was actually .375 miles not .25…which isn’t a huge difference but is none the less still a bit longer….which only made me feel better about my times (which aren’t impressive probably to anyone but me…but I compete against myself so it’s all good to me). Loop one took me 3:34 minutes. Loop two 3:21 minutes (I shaved off 13 seconds!). Loop three 3:19 minutes (shaved off 2 more seconds there). Loop four 3:19 minutes again (definitely thought I would be slower so I was happy). And Loop five 3:22 minutes (granted this one was probably slower considering I had to do it twice).

I remember thinking last night when I was going over my training plan for the day today how five 400’s just doesn’t seem like that much of a workout. Today after running them I disagree. This is a seriously tough workout (I mean come on I burned 496 calories in 30minutes…it doesn’t get much better than that)!

Now off for some lunch and then to head to work!

Jess