Month 2, Week 4, day 2 … Wednesday

Last workout day, and Shannon couldn't be there. A new trainer, Nell, ran the class today and she was pretty nice. Only 3 of us showed up, and one girl from Monday but not yesterday said that Shannon had suggested that on Wednesday we'd be meeting at the parking lot for the walkup trail, and thought that maybe some people who weren't there on Tuesday were over there.

So, of course, we took off jogging toward that parking lot to see… how that way sucks with it's uphill-ness. We made it a running abs day, and Nell was serious about her ab exercises, as it was less running more abs. We'd stop every so often and hit the dirt to do situps and crunches and plank and all sorts of nasty abs things. We made several stops on the way up to the lot, but only one on the way back. Jogged it in around the triangle and to the rope fence in the crossroads lot, where we did… rope-a-dopes? those duck under the rope and punch things. Then we jogged back over to the tunnel and had a nice long stretch and cooldown.

That was probably a grand total of 2 miles with a lot of abs, which wasn't too bad on the last day before eval day. I'd been considering skipping eval day… not really sure why other than I just don't want to know how not improved I might be, but I guess I won't. I still think it's funny this is end of month 2 and I have yet to make an eval day for anything other than measurements. This will be my first time on pushups and situps numbers.

And for serious, what am I doing wrong with my jogging? I'm getting much better and being able to keep going at it longer… finally figured out that notion Shelly said ages ago about it being mostly mental… but my freaking stride is so short or something that my pace is barely faster than I walk. Even if I jog the whole distance, I end up at the back of the pack from being slower. I was trying to keep pace with Amber today… a curvy chick, plagued with allergies as well, who is finishing her month 3. She's generally a slow jogger too, though faster than me. We're taking the same amount of steps as we jog, as in our timing of movement is right on, but she's just taking a longer stride. I tried to make myself take a longer stride and keep up, but then eveything else goes to crap… I bounce more and I feel like I'm using so much more energy, my ankles start to hurt more. All I can figure is I'm still carrying too much weight for my leg muscles. More squats, more lunges.

Honestly, my goal with month 3 is to just try to actually do my homework the whole time. Really slacked in month 2, and I can tell I didn't improve much except in cardio.