Oh, the ups and downs of running! It’s winter in Edmonton and keeping motivated to run in the cold (COLD!), snow, ice and darkness can be quite the mental challenge. Since the beginning of 2014 this is a challenge I’ve been working on. An indoor run here, and outdoor run there, a cancelled run due to -35 Celsius windchill… Keeping consistent is hard!

I thought the answer to my fear of commitment would be to register for a race. Forced commitment! So as mentioned in my last post, I registered for the Calgary St. Patrick’s day 5k. And well… It worked!

In the week that followed, I logged about 42km, mostly outside. Temps in the -20′s be damned, I was getting those runs in. And earlier this week I had time to squeeze in a short 6.5 km run and I nailed it! If you’re reading this and you’re a runner, you know the feeling – you’re pushing hard but rather than getting fatigued or sore like you usually do, you feel like you can just keep going. You’re breathing hard, but it’s not a problem. The legs are doing what you want them to do and even if it hurts they’re going to keep going. It just clicks.

The feeling of fitness returning is a great feeling. You’re reminded of past accomplishments and times when you thought to yourself, “I’m in the best shape of my life”. Even though you might not be there yet, you remember the feeling and you know you’re on your way.

And then it happens. A twinge in your knee, or a dull ache in your ankle, or a deep pain in your hip that forces you to limp and eventually abandon your workout. For me, it was my back. I’ve never really had back problems, but boy did I mess something up last week. It was painful to start, then subsided, then came back with such a vengeance that I could barely move my body above the waist. Whatever caused it, I’ll get it sorted out, but the point is that my training was starting to pay dividends and then a stupid injury screwed things up!

It’s not the end of the world. I went to my chiro and it’s just a muscular problem that can be solved with ice, rolling and stretching. I could even start running again this weekend. As a matter of fact, I just ran on the indoor track for the good part of an hour and my back felt just fine.

It’s hard to think that it’s -34 right now and I’m registered to run a road race in two weeks. I’ll make the most of my time between now and then. As long as I really do have this back problem sorted out, I’ll try to make it to the track three times this week coming up. None of coach Glen’s workouts are easy, and doing three of them in one week would probably benefit me a lot.

So I guess there are always hurdles to overcome. Whether they be injuries, work commitments, family commitments, miserable weather or life in general you just need to roll with it and do what needs to be done.

Now, I did say before that I was going to try to do a bit about food in each of my posts. I don’t have anything terribly exciting to talk about this time, but we did try a very tasty kale salad recently (apparently kale is “trendy” now-a-days). Trendy or not, this was tasty enough that we made it twice this week. The recipe is here, and a picture of how it turned out is below. Healthy isn’t always boring!

Okay, here’s to a big running week. St. Paddy’s day is coming up soon and 20 minutes is looking like a very daunting goal the closer the date gets! Early morning to the track tomorrow. Cheers!

Last year Chris and I started doing the Insanity workout DVDs. I’m active and fit (usually), but found Insanity challenging, especially when simultaneously training for a marathon. I heard from some friends that a newer program by the same coach (Shaun T) had been released, called T25. It’s high intensity and similar to Insanity, but each DVD is only 25 minutes long. Don’t be fooled, it’s 25 minutes of HARD work, but fortunately it’s only 25 minutes. Twenty-five minutes a day of exercise is manageable for almost anyone!

Chris and I spent nearly two weeks at all-inclusive resorts in Mexico in December, and then it was Christmas when we returned, so we literally did nothing but eat and relax for the majority of the month. Come the new year, we knew it was time to buckle down and get back in shape. I ordered the DVDs off amazon.ca and started the program the first week of January.

The DVDs came with two different cycles, alpha and beta but they’re all in the same case. I didn’t pay much attention to the case, but just pulled out a DVD that said “cardio” and started doing it. About halfway through the twenty-five minutes (and too late for me to want to change it!) I realized I was totally doing the beta cardio, rather than the alpha. I struggled my post-wedding/vacation/Christmas butt through it, but it wasn’t pretty…

@SFkaty @timfeeny guess what dimwit did cardio beta on day #1… You mean there's two sides to the DVD case? Effffff http://t.co/QW1NCIwOzA—
Kim (@ironkim) January 07, 2014

There’s also a third level of T25 (gamma), but you need to order it separately. However after a month of T25 alpha, I’m well on my way and am ready to start beta soon! It feels great!

Speed 1.0 – Nailed it! #T25 #Beachbody @shauntfitness—
Kim (@ironkim) February 13, 2014

Last summer when I was training for the NYC Marathon, my running buddy kept telling me about an exercise DVD she was doing called Insanity. I had vaguely heard about before. It’s high intensity workouts that don’t require any equipment, other than a bit of space to jump around on your living room floor. She told me about how she was doing an Insanity video once or twice a week and how she really though it was helping her running. Being a sucker for punishment, and wanting to be fit for the marathon (and our wedding!), I ordered the DVD’s off Amazon.ca.There’s two separate months of DVDs. You do month one, then have a week where you do a recovery DVD, and in month two, the length and intensity increases for different videos.

We started with the first month of Insanity right after we returned from Challenge Penticton. The very first day you do a fit test, which since it was only a 20 minute video, Chris and I decided we would go for a five kilometre run afterwards. That was an optimistic plan. The fit test kicked my butt and I definitely did not make it very far on the run. Fortunately, I found that the more we did the videos, the somewhat easier they became (huge emphasis on the word somewhat – they were still so hard). We also tried to follow the nutritional plan, but found that with marathon training in addition to the DVD program there’s no way I could eat the number of calories the program was telling me to. But we did our best!

We managed to keep up with Insanity for the most part for almost all of September, and in to October. During the second weekend of October we went to Kelowna and ran the Okanagan half marathon. I had been approaching this race as a training run, and without even trying too hard, I killed it – taking eight minutes off my previously fastest time and finished under two hours the first time ever. I attribute a lot of this to the Insanity workouts we’d been doing, as I really hadn’t changed anything in my run training. Insanity hugely helped with my hip and core strength and speed.

Unfortunately after that half marathon, with just a few weeks before New York, I couldn’t keep up with month #2 of the videos as well as keeping my body in peak running shape at the same time. I found that I was too fatigued from Insanity and was unable to get quality runs in, so I stopped. I was maybe doing one video a week in October before the NYC marathon.

I’m curious, have you done any exercise DVDs or serious other workouts while training for an endurance run? I would love to hear about it! Would you like to hear more about the specifics of the workouts or nutritional plan? Let me know!

Side note: Late last year I started hearing about another program by the same trainer, called T25. I really like Shaun T as a coach and a motivator, so I had no doubt this other program would be great as well. I purchased the T25 DVDs and started them in January 2014. Review to come shortly!