weights | heart & sole

I had some really good days and some really lazy days last week. The nice thing is, I’m not training for anything so I’m okay with that. I really enjoyed the workouts I got in and I took it easy when I was tired.

Here’s the day-by-day breakdown:

Monday: P90X abs and push-ups.

Tuesday: Rest Day.

Wednesday: Today was a busy one. I was up right away when my 5:30 alarm went off and got in my P90X ab ripper workout before heading into D.C. for my second week with the November Project. We ran the steps of the Lincoln Memorial mostly nonstop with quick “breaks” where you found your group of four and did five push-ups and five burpees. I book-ended the day with another tough workout doing a late evening Barre Ride at Revolve DC.

Thursday: Rest Day.

Friday: Rest Day.

Saturday: I started my weekend off right with a tough one-hour Body Ride up at Revolve. This class was awesome and seriously kicked my butt. My arms were shaky all day from the weight portion!

Sunday: I was up early, but ended up spending a lazy morning on the couch before running errands making Sunday another rest day.

Like stretching and cross training, I’ve always known how important strength training is to a successful run training program, but I haven’t always been great about fitting it in. Running was always my top priority and in the past I haven’t been great about keeping up with strength training when I’m getting ready for a race.

Things are different this time around though as I’m determined to stay healthy and train right. Also all the benefits of strength training and ways it can make me a better runner are just too hard to ignore anymore. Core strength and how it could help my running form was a big thing I focused on during physical therapy, and I made it a resolution for this year to focus on building up my core strength. This has really stuck so far and I’ve completed my version of the P90X Ab Ripper workout everyday in 2013.

In addition to working on core strength I’ve dedicated two days a week in my Nike DC Half Marathon training plan to strength training. Here are some of the exercises I’ve been working on…

Upper Body: push-ups, bicep curls, tricep extensions, lat raises and front raises

Lower Body: single leg squats, pistol squats (sitting all the way down into a chair on leg and raising back up), side plank with leg lifts and runner wall squats

What are your favorite strength workouts to do?