Monday, May 3, 2010

Variety is the spice of life!

Recently, a colleague of mine in the psychology department sent out a mass email to all the ladies about adding some variety to our workouts. We all do different things - from running to yoga to cardio dance to CROSSFIT! - that we decided to try each others' workouts out these last few weeks before summer. There's been a big email chain going around and no one was really committing to anything, but I decided to just go out there and try one, be adventurous and all. Today was Susanne's Tri-team running meeting!

Susanne is on the triathlon team here at the U of M and has competed in a lot of different meets around the country. She was the first person on our workout email exchange to send out an offer to do a running workout with the triathlon team. Since a core tenet of Crossfit is constant variation, and we rarely do running sprints, I figured it would fit with my fitness philosophy. Even more, I'm TERRIBLE at running and you don't get better at something by avoiding it - you get better by DOING! So, it seemed like a good win-win situation.

We had a nice walk over to the track despite the rain and I immediately felt welcomed by the Tri community. They're a pretty diverse group of phenomenal athletes - I was a little intimidated and embarrassed of my inability to run. It was pretty informal and people just chose what they wanted to work on: one group of girls decided to do a 3-mile "tempo" run (I learned all kinds of new lingo at this meeting!) and a group of guys decided to do some 1200m runs with 800m runs in between.

Judging from my soreness post 2-mile "Murph" challenge, I wasn't really up for some distance running (yes, I know 3 miles isn't exactly a long distance...give me a break!). So, Susanne and I decided to do 6 rounds of 400m runs. We warmed-up with a good 1200m run at a decent pace and then dove right in. I brought my watch with me so I could time it...but now looking back at my times, maybe it would have been better if I didn't know!

Lap 1 - 1:41 (1:18 rest)
Lap 2 - 1:42 (1:55 rest)
Lap 3 - 1:42 (2:30 rest)
Lap 4 - 1:44 (2:46 rest)
Lap 5 - 1:44 (2:13 rest)
Lap 6 - 1:40

Well, at least my last time was faster than my first time, right? I was slightly disappointed because one of my paleo challenge goals is to do a 1:35 400m, which isn't even a GREAT time and I couldn't even meet that. I better step up my A-game these last few weeks of the challenge!

Overall, I'm really glad I tried out this workout. It was great seeing the community that the Tri team has created and I was reminded of my own Crossfit community and how ANY type of fitness can be a positive impact on someone just due to the friendship factor.

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