Tag Archives: running

Second Week of My New Morning Workout Routine: Day 14 Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

This morning was a little weird. I ended up waking up at 4am and I couldn’t go back to sleep until about 6:30am. I didn’t get up and start my routine at that time because I hadn’t gone to sleep until midnight. I know 4 hours of sleep is not enough. I could feel it.

Listened to a couple of chapters of an audiobook that I just started. Usually that helps me relax and get back to sleep. But this book did the opposite. It’s really good. It had me riveted and I kept wanting to hear more. I wanted to find out what was going to happen next.

[Side note: The book is called Redeeming Justice: From Defendant to Defender, My Fight For Equity On Both Sides Of A Broken System. It’s by Jarrett Adams. It’s his autobiographical account of being falsely accused of rape, being charged as an adult at age 17, having completely ineffective assistance of counsel, getting wrongfully convicted, going to prison for 10 years, getting in touch with the Wisconsin Innocence Project, getting exonerated, and coming out of prison. But that’s just where the story starts! He decides to go back to school. First junior college. Then to get his BA. Then he applies, gets into law school, and graduates. His goal? To fight for other wrongfully convicted people and to get them out of prison. Today he is an attorney. The book opens with the story of his current clients, convicted of killing a police officer, and his fight to get them justice so they can get back home to their loved ones. Very powerful and inspiring story! Here’s a link to his webpage: https://jarrettadamslaw.com/redeeming-justice ]

After two hours, I realized that listening to this book was not going to let me fall asleep. Decided to put on some meditation music. Listened for a little while and I was asleep in no time. Woke up around 830am.

Ran through my routine. Water. Electric kettle. Coffee. Restroom. Washed my face. Put on workout clothes, minus shoes and socks today. Drank my coffee. Instead of going for a run, hitting the gym, or even going on a walk, I’ve decided to do a yoga routine. I haven’t been doing yoga since I started my early morning routine.

But when I was running 5 to 10+ miles per day before COVID, I had a whole yoga workout routine that I would go through after each run. It was amazing. I got it from a physical therapist who helped me rehab some pain with my IT band and plantar fascia. Got rid of all my issues pretty quickly. Yoga for runners, that’s what she called it. She said it was one of the best things I could do to prevent getting injured as I ran faster, farther, and longer.

Well since I’ve gotten back into the habit of running and lifting on a daily basis and blogging about it, a few yoga bloggers have liked my posts, so that reminded me that I need to start incorporating yoga back into my training schedule. So shout out to the yoga bloggers who’ve been supportive.

Then I was talking with my good friend from the East Coast, who’s also a runner, and he mentioned that he’s been doing a really good routine. I asked him to send it to me and he did. After going through it, I’ll let you know if I recommend it. So that’s what I’m about to do!!

Photo by Prasanth Inturi on Pexels.com

Also, if anyone has any other suggestions of good yoga-for-runners routines, please feel free to pass them along. Thanks! Have a great day!

Second Week of My New Morning Workout Routine: Day 11

Posted on by
Reply

Another tough workout. Actually the workout itself wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was waking up at 4:45am. Even though I went to sleep early (around 9:30pm), I woke up at about 1am and couldn’t go back to sleep until after 2pm. It’s been really hot.

When my alarm went off I automatically and instinctively shut it off because I was in such a deep sleep. A little while later I started dreaming and woke up directly from my dream. It was already 5:10am so I ran through my routine. Still tired and groggy. Water. Coffee. Wash my face. Put on gym clothes. No sit ups because I was running late. grabbed my stuff and headed out the door.

Got to the gym at 5:40am. Today was a cardio day. But I started by doing my sit ups. Then rehab work on my shoulder and hip. Then a half hour of treadmill. The first 20 minutes I started off at about 4.5mph pace and gradually increased until I was pushing about 5.3 mph. I was trying to get more than 1.65 miles in 20 minutes to beat my best so far. But I moved my phone and accidentally hit the “cool down” button. For a second I was upset because I was going to beat it, but I didn’t. And I had no way of proving that I would have.

Then I thought to myself… this just gives me the opportunity to chase something else. I can run 1 mile in under 10 minutes, haven’t been able to do that yet since I started training again. And that’s something I used to do on a regular basis before I stopped training a few years back.

So I visualized that I was in a race and had fallen (pressing the button) and now I had to get back up and chase down the person that passed me. In this case that “person” was going to run the next mile in 10 minutes. So to beat this “person” I had to run at a clip that would allow me to finish a mile in under 10 minutes.

I started off at a pace that was about 10-20 seconds slower than what I needed. So I kept ramping up the speed! The most challenging thing was that I wanted to do this all while keeping my breathing under control and not exhaling through my mouth. Worked for a while as I cut the distance. I got it down to being only about 5 seconds off the pace to win. Pushed it harder. Got it to a point where I was 10 seconds ahead! But after that I was breathing hard and had to exhale through my mouth. I was able to relax and keep that pace up for the last four minutes.

I ended up finishing 1 mile in 9 minutes and 47 seconds!

I did it. Proud of myself. It was hard but I pushed through. Then 15 minutes on the elliptical. Weighed myself, 205lbs. Looks like I’m not dropping the weight as fast this week. It’s all good. I just got to keep moving in the right direction. Keep my routine going and keep building my habits.

Walked back home. Drank water. Had green eggs and no ham. Green eggs are just sauteed spinach in scrambled eggs. Decaf. Shave. Shower. Get dressed. Write. Out the door. See ya!

Second Week of My New Morning Workout Routine: Day 10

Posted on by
Reply

Workout done! That was hard slogging. I guess that means I should celebrate it more! Because it means that even though it was tough and I was (still am) feeling pretty exhausted, I handled business.

Woke up at 4:45am. That was rough. Almost went back to sleep. But I keep telling myself the same thing… run through your routine and if after that you want to go back to bed, you can. So, I got up. Drank a cold glass of water (with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar). Put water in the electric kettle and turned it on. Put coffee in the filter. Restroom, washed my face. Came back and poured hot water over coffee. Put on workout clothes. Did two sets of sit ups. Drank coffee (always decaf).

Today, I still wanted to go back to sleep. So I laid down and did a 3 minute meditation / breathing exercise to get some energy. After that I was out the door. Got to the gym by 5:30am. It was still dark outside.

Still dark outside. About to start my workout.

Did cardio first. 15 minutes on elliptical. 10 minutes on bike. 15 minutes on treadmill. Then weights. Upper body. Then sit ups. I’m out. That was a good workout. Tough.

Walk back home. It’s about 7am.

Time to get ready for work. I’m still pretty exhausted. Might have to break down and drink regular coffee today. But it was worth it. Feeling proud that I got it done despite how tough it was.

Have a great day!