USA Fit Houston training has been good so far. I finished my first week of training and I have to admit that it isn’t easy for me. The first Saturday was the 3 mile time trial and I’ve already blogged about that experience. Suffice it to say that I spent most of the rest of that day getting warm then relaxing as I was super tired.
Last Tuesday was the first real training session for my USA Fit group. I’m in the 5k/10k Stay Fit group which is for runners who can already run a 5k (walk/jog/run 3 miles) and most have already run a half or full marathon. We met at Memorial Park’s Running Center at 6:30pm. It has a crazy small parking lot (so I’m not sure why they picked this spot to meet). Fortunately I arrived early as traffic wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and I was able to park quite easily. I did see other runners, however, parking farther away and they had to walk over in the dark. The good thing about the Running Center is that it has inside bathrooms and an large gathering area next to the building.
We started our workout with a short warm-up. Lots of dynamic stretches, some lunges and we also had to call out our names. I’m not sure that I’ll remember 50 people’s names, but maybe the coaches are better at that than me. We have 2 coaches. Monica is the primary coach and David is the assistant coach. They are supposed to keep track of us and ensure that we all return from our runs safely!
After the warm-up our assignment was a 30 minute easy run. Now mind you I only really have one speed when I run – forward. Maybe my easy run needs to be a walk/run? When Monica did the 3 mile time trial, I thought she said that we would be matched up with other runners at our speed – but I didn’t see that happening in this run. Basically the class right now already has small groups that know each other, as they have already done USA Fit before. So I ran by myself. It was the first run that I’ve ever done in the dark at Memorial Park and it wasn’t much fun.
As you can see, my pace was slow and I only ran 2.5 miles. But I’m not sure that I would call it “EASY”! After class, we had a stretch and exercise class. It was a combination of yoga and strength moves. All of the yoga positions were nice and easy for me, but I still struggle with lunges and squats. I don’t know why they are so hard for me.
On Thursday, it was in the 60s when I left the house for USA Fit, so I thought I was dressed properly for the run with a tank and a Skirt Sports running skirt. When I arrived, however, it got cold quickly as the sun went down. Fortunately I had a hoodie in the car that I could put on. It wasn’t a proper running hoodie as it was a light sweatshirt material, but I’m really glad that I had it!
We did the same warm-up as Tuesday’s class. Dynamic stretching, calling out our names, etc., but the number of runners was less than on Tuesday. Monica said our run was going to be a “3 mile tempo run”. Basically, she wanted us to run the first mile at a speed where we could talk easily, the next mile where it was difficult to talk, but we could answer short questions and then the final mile where we would slowly start to slow down.
As we headed towards the trail, I overheard one of the runners (John) saying that he was running 5/1 intervals. I started talking with him and as we began running, it seemed like he was about the same pace as me, so I kept running next to him and talking to him. When his interval timer went off at 5 minutes, I asked him whether he was stopping and he said that he normally runs through the first one and then stops for his walk at 10 minutes. So I kept running with him. When it went off the second time, we were almost to the mile marker, so he decided to keep running. We ran to complete the first mile and then took a walk break. Our running pace was mostly around 11:30-12:00 min/mile, which is good for me. I want to push and keep trying to stay under 12:00 min/mile.
We walked until 1.25 miles and then started running again. It’s fun to see the above graph because you can see the large puddle we had to get around at just about the 1.5 mile mark!! We ran an 11:30-12:00 min/mile pace to 2.25 miles (again, a mile run) and then walked for another 1/4 mile. Then it was the last push to the finish. We ever ran up the hill onto the overpass, which was difficult, but we did it. I wanted to die at this point, but John said we almost made 3.0 miles, so we continued until John’s watch said exactly 3 miles. Whew! I’m not sure why it was a hard run – since we had the walk breaks – but it was probably the constant pace under 12:00 minutes per mile that made me so tired. And maybe also running later in the day, instead of the morning.
We finished class with some yoga and strength moves along with some stretches. I felt pretty good after the class although tired. I had a protein shake in the car on the ride home and couldn’t wait to hit the warm shower.
For Saturday, the USA Fit class was scheduled to hills at Spotts Park. The workout goal was to run the hills for 2 minutes, then jog for 4 minutes, repeating this 4 times. A weather front moved in on Friday night, however, and by Saturday morning we had torrential rain off and on. The workout was cancelled. I was both happy that the run was cancelled and I could stay home cuddled up and warm…but also disappointed because I know that running hills will be good for me!
On Sunday, I made up for missing the Saturday class by running with Shelley at Memorial Park. We didn’t do any hills, but we did have a nice run around Memorial Park. Even though I took a quick walk break around the 2 mile mark, we still managed to have an average pace of 11:55 min/mile! YAY!! The first mile pace was even less at 11:33 min/mile – WoW!
This week I also finished catching up on some of the blogs that I’m reading. AnnaTheApple is one of my favorites. She is a runner in the UK that loves to run long distances and she loves food. She also eats an amazing amount of CAKE! When I find a good blog, I like to start reading the blog from the beginning, meaning that I start with the earliest post and then read to present day. This week I finally finished reading all of Anna’s past posts. She’s run most of the large marathons but still needs to run New York and Chicago. Who knows…maybe she’ll run the Houston Marathon one day! It would be fun to cheer her on!
