On The Road Again… Sort of

We had some warm weather this week that melted the snow and made me eager to get out running again. I’m afraid to run on our country roads when there are snowbanks on either side of the road. If a driver doesn’t pull over to give me some room, there’s nowhere to go. After two days of springlike temperatures, I was hoping that I could get out on Saturday morning. A Facebook friend challenged me to join her “Weekend Warrior” challenge: doing a 5K and holding plank position as long as possible.

Alas, winter came back for the weekend. Saturday morning was cold and blustery, with a frigid wind chill and whiteouts from blowing snow. I didn’t want to give up, though. I’ve been making too many excuses about exercise lately. I finished up some errands (filling the car up with gas, going to the bank and the post office, and getting some deals at CVS… $60 worth of stuff for $20, and $8 in coupons off on my next visit!), then it was off to the church gym for laps. 51 laps is a 5K, so I put on my MP3 player and started running. My previous best time for 51 laps was 48 minutes, so I was hoping to beat that. I was encouraged to see that my time after one mile was 13:09. I don’t think I’ve ever had a mile under 14 minutes before!

I kept hitting the button on my MP3 player to skip past slow songs. I wanted peppy stuff to keep me moving. I was starting to drag a bit at lap 34, but “Running Just to Catch Myself” by Mark Schultz. I love that song. It’s my theme song. That perked up my running speed, so when the song finished, I hit the back button and listened to it again. Good old Mark kept me company for about 12 laps. 12 speedy laps.

I was very pleased with my time: 43:10. I was afraid that I would have digressed with my times, since I haven’t run in several weeks. Before you know it, I’ll be registering times in the 30s!

I got home and made a yummy dinner of chicken fajitas and homemade tortillas. Tasty, healthy, and gluten-free (I’m tweaking a single-serve gluten-free tortilla recipe – Ron and Bethany had regular flour tortillas, although I tossed in some flaxseeds to make them healthier).

                                            The Plank Competition

Once our lunches had a chance to settle, Bethany and I had a plank competition. I’ll admit, Bethany won by a long shot! I only held the plank position for 20 seconds… she held on for a minute.

It felt good to get in such a vigorous workout. It’s a challenge to make time for an hour at the gym with my current schedule, but I’m going to work on doing it more often.