Seven Miles with music assistance

Today, getting out the door for a run was the hardest thing ever.  It took me until 4pm to finally get myself off the couch, get geared up and head out.  The plan was to do seven miles.  I'd considered various iterations of ways to make it bearable including only running 4 miles or heading to the gym for an elliptical and track workout.

Ultimately I adopted a 'wait and see' attitude, between doing 4 or 7 and headed out.  The first two miles are the same for either route so I'd have some time to see how I felt.  As always, once I got moving I felt much better and wanted to keep moving.  I opted for 7 miles and went over to Lake Nokomis where I hadn't been in some time.  Everyone else was there today, especially at the main beach, so they must not have missed me too terribly much. 

The only compromise I really let myself stick to was listening to music on this run.  I haven't listened to music on an outdoor run in quite some time.  Even some of my indoor runs have been sans soundtrack.  Never thought I'd see that day.  But today, I definitely needed the music assist.  I needed to look forward to something entertaining for some of the parts of the route I'm not super excited for anymore.  Because it was a busy day at the lake and I'd be on pedestrian trails (there's actual cyclist on the bike path today) I also needed something to distract me from all the walkers. I'd recently added a couple new songs to the workout list but otherwise was perfectly content to listen to Pitbull and Shakira for an hour.

Pace wise I'd also adopted a 'wait and see' type attitude and didn't have any expectations. I kept the run surprisingly right around goal marathon pace, including stop lights, bathroom pause and a walking phone conversation.  And stopping to snap this photo.  Most of the pace was a 'try not to puke, but keep running because it will calm down your stomach' pace.  I'd made an interesting choice for lunch.  By interesting I mean "what the hell was I thinking?!?"  Happily, I did not poop my pants and was up for a 'finisher' at the end of the run.

My 'finisher' for the day had two goals.  Goal one was work the abs.  Goal two was make peace with my legs after all the squats I'd made them do on Friday at Body Pump.  Since one of the best ways to prevent DOMS is to work the muscles more, I decided to more squats.  The finisher was a one legged plank/mountain climber, then squats.  Start at 10 of left leg plank/mountain climber, 10 right leg plank/mountain climber, 10 squats, all the way down to 1 of each.  For more information, this is a One legged plank and this is a mountain climber.  I do them slowly, more for practice holding my core together with the bonus of getting the hip flexors as well.  Honest moment - I don't think this finisher was hard enough.  Maybe I'll stretch and extra long time tonight to make up for it.