Things We’ve Learned & Wished That We Knew Sooner
April 24, 2012 by · 13 Comments
As you may or may not know in 2010 was when we began our training to run our first half-marathon. Both of us had run in high school and/or college, but never to the distance we would hit in our half marathon training. The two of us and probably like a lot of people who train for their first half marathon followed Hal Higdon‘s guide.
Hal Higdon’s guides are great and perhaps there are some people out there who work their way through a number of his different plans. We, however, did not and kind of decided to start looking through different plans (one of which was definitely Hal Hidgon’s) and piecing them together. After all what works for one person might not work for another and it never hurts to try something to see if it works for you!
Throughout the not quite two years of us running together we’ve learned to appreciate aspects of our training, realized some things that needed to be added and why, so we shall share with you!
Weight Training
Both of us got personal trainers at a point where we each wanted to lose weight (You can read about Beth’s story here and Teal’s story here). Boy are we thankful to Will & Johnny for helping us to get into shape, get healthy and teaching us a lot! Weight training is very important as you need to build a base for yourself. If you only rely on running to build your muscles then you are missing out! Not every single race you might run will you actually feel yourself digging deep and using that core strength or pumping those arms hard to get to that finish line, but those are important parts of your body to work on strength so you have it when you need it. With that said it’s important to find a balance with your weight training and make sure you are working every part of your body. Build that strong foundation so you can be a stronger runner! It was well into us running together that we realized we were at an advantage by already having trainers and having those weekly weights session. We didn’t know where we would be in our running if we didn’t have them!
While yes, a trainer makes it so much easier to get your weights session in you don’t neeed to have one! Grab a friend that’s knowledgeable about weights and ask them to show you the ropes a few times or look into one of the many apps that’s how there and available to guide you through a workout!
If you would like more of an explanation of the benefits weight training please see this post from Runner’s World.
Tempo Runs
We just recently started to incorporate these into our workouts. What were we waiting for with these??
What? There is lots to read out there about tempo runs and sometimes it doesn’t seem to be written in layman’s terms, or is that just us? Part of why we probably did NOT do tempo runs for awhile was because we did not truly understand them. A tempo run normally consists of running at an easy pace to start, let’s say we are doing a 4 mile tempo run, so you may run your first mile at an easy pace then for miles 2 and 3 you kick it into a higher gear. This higher gear is a hard pace yet if you were rate levels of hard you might have comfortably hard, hard, and extremely hard. You want this higher gear to be at a comfortably hard pace so that you can sustain this level of intensity for the entirety of your two miles. Once you hit mile 4 take your speed back down to where you were in mile 1 for a nice recovery mile.
Importance. The idea behind a tempo run is to raise your lactate threshold. If you are at a point in your running where you are able to run the mileage you want in a long run but are ready to work on speed this is a workout you’ll want to add into your training schedule once a week to build speed and strength. The one thing that really helped us in determining how to do a tempo run was by using the McMillan Running Calculator not only did it help with tempo runs but also discovering what type of speed we needed for all sorts of runs.
Hill Workouts
What? While yes there are races out there that you might register that are flat, flat, flat! But that is simply not going to be the case for each and every race that you will ever run. Those hills in your runs/races continue to help challenge us as runners. The best workout we have found to make sure a hill does not defeat us in a race are hill repeats. We’ll be honest they aren’t the most fun type of workout, but believe us when you finish a race with hills you’ll be thankful for the time you spent on hill repeats. For us a hill repeat workout consists of:
1. Doing your homework and find a hill that will work. You might want a hill that is somewhere between .1 – .2 of a mile.
2. Get a little bit of mileage in before your hill repeats, i.e. run from your house out to the hill
3. When you reach your hill if it’s your first time maybe try 4 or 5 runs up the hill and back down (but have a goal of working up to 10 hill repeats)
4. Get in that last bit of mileage back to your house
Importance. We’ve recently heard a couple people say this and it is the absolute truth, “the difference between me continuing to run and the people walking up the hill in that race are these workouts.” Even if you are not specifically training for a race that has hills in them, this workout is beneficial! It’ll build muscle that running on a flat path does not, help with your endurance and help you to get faster! Throw this type of running workout into your weekly mix as well and you’ll feel a difference at your next race!
Tangents
Just for good measure we are throwing this one in this post. And no we aren’t taking you back to geometry class either! 🙂 Or is it basic algebra?? Ha, math is hard, y’all! 🙂 There were plenty of times that we can remember one of us saying “ugh! My Runkeeper says I ran 6.43 in that 10k race!” and there were times when we’d finish our long runs together that we were asked “why did Teal run a further distance than you Beth?” TANGENTS! It’s about tangents! We can honestly say we were taught this very valuable piece of information from reading katieRUNSthis’ blog!
The majority of races we have run together have a certified course so it has been measured and is exactly the distance the course claims it to be. When a course is measured it is done so on tangents, so when there is a curved portion of your course the person who measured it did so on the tangents. This is also why for instance when we go run our long runs or even if we run side by side during a race our mileage for that long run or race could be different because neither one of us is running the curves the exact same. For the visual people out there, let us show you the tangents in visual form.
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While you might have learned about tangents today know that at your next race you might do your best to run the tangents but still find that you have some extra mileage at the end, well, it’s hard to run the tangents EXACTLY. As you have to be looking ahead and plotting out exactly how to run the next curve not to mention that there are other runners out there with you on the course that might keep you from running that straight line exactly. All we can do is do our best!
We are no experts by any means! We read articles, blogs, etc. online in an effort to try and learn how we can improve our running. We wanted to share some information that opened up our eyes, helped us to understand running more and that we think everyone should have the benefit of knowing!
If you already knew all of this, well, thanks for bearing with us today! If you didn’t know all of this – are you going to be making some changes now to your weekly running? Glad to know why there is extra mileage on those races you’ve run before?
Break? I Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Break….OK, Maybe I Do!
March 6, 2012 by · 15 Comments
On our March goals I mentioned that I wanted to survive my 2 week rest without cheating and we figured that that you might need a little more explanation. So here goes…
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Not too long ago I told you guys about my weight and my efforts to lose weight. I had been the heaviest in my life and not happy so I decided to do something about it. I managed to drop down quite a bit but have essentially been stuck at my current weight for a while now. At first I just had no loss or gain, and then all of a sudden an actual gain in fat for the first time in 2 years. To me, and many others this may seem odd, I work out basically everyday, run all the time, play basketball, swim, workout with a personal trainer, track my food, have very few cheat days…. you get the drift…an actual fat gain seems pretty impossible to me. So what is the problem?? It is calorically impossible in my opinion for this to happen.
I talked to my trainer, Will, about this a lot, he dug into what he knows and asked around as well and basically came to a consensus that I am overtraining and my body is in an adaptive mode all the time. So while I have fallen into a very healthy routine of exercise and eating right my body has too and has basically decided it is going to stay where it is. Thanks body – love you too!
Talk about motivation killer. I think I actually had a pitty party at the gym the day I was weighed and even broke down and decided exercise and everything I was doing was pointless and stupid, a waste of time.. blah blah blah. Ever feel like this??
I would say that this is similar to when people decide they have to make a change and come to a breaking point. Will asked me if it was feasible to take 2 weeks off from working out and move my body from adaptive mode and into recovery. I cringed of course. I have 2 half marathons in March, hence part of the problem, but I decided to do it. During this time I am going to do no running or cardio. I will weight train 2 times a week with Will and yoga 2 to 3 times a week. Getting my runner self to not run 3-4 weeks before a race is a little scary, but I am too frustrated to stay where I am and not try something new! I can’t help but think of the insanity definition here. Can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting something to change.
Also, Beth and I both joined MyFitnessPal this week. I have always tracked her food on myapex but I found that it is less convenient. Sorry 24 Hour Fitness! MyFitnessPal works super easy on the phone and has more food listed so it makes it much easier to track food better. So with the rest, I am also becoming more on point with food.
Anyone ever been through this madness before? Let us know! What did and did not work for you??
Up’s & Down’s & Johnny to the Rescue
January 11, 2012 by · 4 Comments
A few weeks ago you heard from Teal on her lifestyle changes that got her to the weight she is right now. So I guess it would be my turn. 🙂 Probably like any girl I have my own body image issues, but I tend to blame the private school I attend on that to some degree. It seemed like all the girls in my grade were skinny little stick figures and well there’s really no way my body can/will resemble that. I have hips! Ha, they aren’t going anywhere and I’m still learning to love them. With that said I had weight gains in typical points of my life. I started college – hello ten pounds!
I spent two summers (2002 & 2003) in college working at a family camp as a counselor and a life guard. We were SO active that the pounds just melted off. Then I had a year in college which where I *think* I attempted to be apart of as many organizations as possible, hold positions in some of them and still be a full time student. I look back at that year and still don’t understand how I survived it. Ha, but with that busyness came absolutely NO time where I was working out. The pounds came creeping back.
Left: August 2004 Right: May 2006
My last year in college I had a lighter load than my previous years as I spent the majority of each week in a class room observing and/or teaching. Because of that I spent little time in an actual classroom where I was the student and had homework to turn in. The beginning of that last year I had a break up with my boyfriend and in about a week lost 10 pounds which was about what I’d put on in that previous busy, busy year. Once I dropped those 10 pounds I didn’t want to put them back on, so I picked back up with my running. Most days you could find me up on the 3rd floor of the Rec Center putting in 3 miles on the track and depending on the weather out running the streets of College Station.
Cancun Girls Trip in 2006 (with Teal) and this is literally the only swimsuit picture I have no qualms showing to anyone
When I moved back to Dallas the summer of 2006 I was determined to stay fit, so I joined a gym. And just as quickly as I signed up for a 3 year contract I’d stopped going. 🙂 I hated that gym. I won’t discuss what gym it is but this particular location I hated going in there after awhile I just realized the gym itself was dark and dingy and just didn’t make me want to be in there. I managed to stay at my ideal weight for quite awhile and it wasn’t until some of my friends and I had the brilliant idea in early 2007 of starting a weekly happy hour that the pounds started coming back. In reality I had a combination of weekly happy hour and new relationship weight coming on. Well, in December 2006, a new gym had just opened up RIGHT by my house. I went and toured it, liked what I saw and signed up with them!
So for 2.5 years I’d be paying for two gym memberships until my contract ran up with the first one. Am I made of money? No, but I thought my health was important enough to sign up at a gym where I would actually go and be active even if it meant sacrificing somewhere else each month to cover the cost of the gym I did not go to. I can still hear my cousin, who owns a few gyms, saying “You signed a contract with a gym? What were you thinking?”
One day I decided I’d try a spin class – I’d been to one in college taught by a friend, but before I knew it I was going to spin class every time Angie was teaching! I loved her personality, her music selection and enthusiasm to get us all working hard! Angie’s husband singing and dancing around on the spin bike was just an added bonus to the hour workout.
After a class somewhere in late August or early September of 2007 Angie approached me and offered me a chance to go workout with her husband for free in one of his group training classes. I was still in a rut with the weight I’d gained that year from happy hour and the new relationship that I was happy to take the opportunity. So off I went that week either on a Tuesday or Thursday morning to workout with a group of ladies I’d never met before at 6:00 a.m.
Oh my gosh, we did so many lunges that morning – lunges with weights, now switch weights with the person behind you and lunge, walking lunges….lunges, lunges, lunges! I am not sure I have ever been so sore from a workout in my life!
Then I was sold on working out with Johnny and I have been ever since that day! See I was working out with other women doing weights with some cardio mixed in, and because it’s group you aren’t paying $75+ for a personal trainer although he does do personal training as well. 🙂 For the first year of working out with Johnny he was renting space from a gymnastic center and then he got his very own place just down the street in August of 2008.
Have you ever been to the Coppell location of Run On!, well, if you have then you’ve been next door to Johnny’s…more specifically Johnny’s Health & Fitness! Actually right before Christmas JHF moved to the bigger space next door to help with their growing needs as a gym, so you can now find them two doors down from Run on! You can see me there pretty much every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 6:00 – 7:00 a.m.
Johnny & Angie really came into my life RIGHT when I was needing someone to help me get the extra pounds off. Johnny discussed my eating habits and nutrition with me. Ultimately I started drinking Premier Nutrition protein shakes on his recommendation, and I also incorporated a digestive enzyme pill into my everyday life based off of one of his recommendations. What I can appreciate about Johnny’s recommendations is that if he wouldn’t do it, he’s not going to try and convince you to do it! He gives it to you straight. That’s also the approach he takes with his clients when he sees them slacking on their diet or not getting in the cardio outside of working out with him. He gives it to you straight in this nice balance of here is the truth but not being a jerk about it.
(read more about Digest Plus here and Premier Nutrition Protein shakes here)
At this point I don’t remember how long into my training with Johnny it was that I had taken 12 pounds off. Not only has he helped me keep my weight under control, but he’s also been a great resource to me as well with all of my running! Because I know that he really wants to see each of his clients be the best that they can be!
I would be completely devastated if I were to move and/or no longer be able to workout with Johnny. In my opinion truly good, dedicated trainers are hard to come by! It’s also my opinion that the majority of trainers at big chain gyms are rarely going to push you the way Johnny pushes me and every single one of his clients. I feel like I can say this based on trying out a workout with one of the trainers at my big chain gym I go to for spin class and other cardio machines. Plus I know that for me having a personal trainer is just not in my budget so having a place where I can do group training is doable!
Johnny & me
I’ve made some great friends from my workout group and couldn’t even imagine where I would be right now if I did not have Johnny in my life! If you live in the Coppell/Lewisville/Flower Mound area and are looking for a trainer check out Johnny’s Health & Fitness! I drive 15 minutes from Plano to workout with him. I know other clients of his that drive from Dallas proper, Sasche and other places I don’t even know about to workout with Johnny. If you are interested in trying out a training class with Johnny get in touch with me!
Or you can check out his website here.
Follow Johnny on twitter.
Or like him on Facebook!