Yesterday was a cross training day, and I was thinking about taking the kids to the rec center to swim while I did a deep water run. I remembered that Noah had recently asked me to teach him to play tennis, so I figured I could do that instead and count it as my cross training for the day.
We grabbed some rackets and a ball, and then Noah, Eli, and I drove to a nearby park that has tennis courts. I hadn't played tennis since high school, so I had a hard time even remembering how to play! But we had a lot of fun just hitting the ball back and forth, and seeing how long we could keep it in play. It was a great workout--I was a little worried about my stress fracture, because of all the changes in direction, but I didn't have any trouble with it.
It was super humid, so we only stayed for about 40 minutes, but the kids loved it and said they wanted to come back again.
Yesterday evening, the kids and I walked (with Joey) to my parents' house. Joey loves to play in the lake, so we bring him over there sometimes to get his fix. I can't get over what a good dog he is! As soon as we get to their house, I let him off leash, and he's like a rocket straight for the lake. He doesn't have any interest in running away, and he just likes to be wherever we are. He played in the lake for a while, and then Eli was going to clean him off with the hose before we left.
It was SO cute. I thought Joey would run from the spray, but he did just he opposite. He chased after it and tried to eat the water coming out!
I was nervous about my run this morning, because I haven't done speed work in SO LONG. I think the last time I actually ran my best was at a Thanksgiving 10K last year. On the schedule today was 8 x 600's at roughly-5K pace. I don't have a clue what my current 5K pace is, but if I had to guess, I would think 9:00-9:30 ish. Mentally, this was odd for me--to run speed work (600's) at a 9:15 pace? I'm used to doing speed work in the low 7:00's or even high 6:00's when I was in good shape. But, I'm basically starting all over from scratch, so I decided to try it before I declared it "too easy".
I learned that it definitely wasn't too easy. Instead of doing 600 meters (0.37 miles), I chose to go by time instead--3:00 running, and then walking 1:30 to recover between intervals. I figured it would be roughly the same distance, but it would be easier to keep track of. I walked a couple of minutes to warm up, and then set the treadmill at 6.5 mph (a 9:13/mi pace) and ran for three minutes. It was much tougher than I expected! I think if I was to run my hardest right now, I might be able to pull off a sub-9:00 mile, and just barely finish without dying.
I continued the 3:00/1:30 intervals, at 6.5 mph and 3.0 mph respectively. After 8 intervals, I felt good. I felt like I had worked hard, but not too hard, which is what the goal was. The Hansons plan has a specific window for speed work, and it's slower than what typical plans call for. If nothing else, running at a faster pace helped me to see where my fitness level is right now.
Yesterday, Jerry, the kids, and I walked up to the store. When we paid, Jerry used his debit card, and it was declined. That was really odd, because I knew we had money in our account. The cashier ran it through twice, and both times it said declined. I felt a little panicked when we got home, and I looked up our account online. Nothing looked too unusual, other than a few authorization holds that were pending and I had no idea what they were (but again, not that unusual).
Today, Jerry called the bank to find out what was going on, and it turns out that while we were in New York, someone stole Jerry's debit card info, and yesterday, they had a little shopping spree in New York. There was only ONE spot that we used the debit card while we were gone (we used cash everywhere else), so we know exactly where it was. It infuriates me that someone did that! I know it happens to people fairly often these days, but that's the first time we ever had an issue like that.
The bank flagged the card and froze our account when they saw some charges for hundreds of dollars in NY. We won't be responsible for those charges, but now we need new debit cards because we can't use ours. The cards take 14 days to get here, so we'll just have to start using cash only for a while--that's going to be hard to get used to, because I very rarely carry cash with me.
So, anyway, it's kind of a mess right now, but hopefully the bank will get it all sorted out soon. I found it pretty funny that a couple of the charges on the card were $60 for Burger King and $50 for Wendy's--who spends that much money on fast food in one day?! I also had to laugh at the irony... I was in NY to learn about financial security, and while I was there, my bank account info was hacked ;)
We grabbed some rackets and a ball, and then Noah, Eli, and I drove to a nearby park that has tennis courts. I hadn't played tennis since high school, so I had a hard time even remembering how to play! But we had a lot of fun just hitting the ball back and forth, and seeing how long we could keep it in play. It was a great workout--I was a little worried about my stress fracture, because of all the changes in direction, but I didn't have any trouble with it.
It was super humid, so we only stayed for about 40 minutes, but the kids loved it and said they wanted to come back again.
Yesterday evening, the kids and I walked (with Joey) to my parents' house. Joey loves to play in the lake, so we bring him over there sometimes to get his fix. I can't get over what a good dog he is! As soon as we get to their house, I let him off leash, and he's like a rocket straight for the lake. He doesn't have any interest in running away, and he just likes to be wherever we are. He played in the lake for a while, and then Eli was going to clean him off with the hose before we left.
It was SO cute. I thought Joey would run from the spray, but he did just he opposite. He chased after it and tried to eat the water coming out!
I was nervous about my run this morning, because I haven't done speed work in SO LONG. I think the last time I actually ran my best was at a Thanksgiving 10K last year. On the schedule today was 8 x 600's at roughly-5K pace. I don't have a clue what my current 5K pace is, but if I had to guess, I would think 9:00-9:30 ish. Mentally, this was odd for me--to run speed work (600's) at a 9:15 pace? I'm used to doing speed work in the low 7:00's or even high 6:00's when I was in good shape. But, I'm basically starting all over from scratch, so I decided to try it before I declared it "too easy".
I learned that it definitely wasn't too easy. Instead of doing 600 meters (0.37 miles), I chose to go by time instead--3:00 running, and then walking 1:30 to recover between intervals. I figured it would be roughly the same distance, but it would be easier to keep track of. I walked a couple of minutes to warm up, and then set the treadmill at 6.5 mph (a 9:13/mi pace) and ran for three minutes. It was much tougher than I expected! I think if I was to run my hardest right now, I might be able to pull off a sub-9:00 mile, and just barely finish without dying.
I continued the 3:00/1:30 intervals, at 6.5 mph and 3.0 mph respectively. After 8 intervals, I felt good. I felt like I had worked hard, but not too hard, which is what the goal was. The Hansons plan has a specific window for speed work, and it's slower than what typical plans call for. If nothing else, running at a faster pace helped me to see where my fitness level is right now.
Yesterday, Jerry, the kids, and I walked up to the store. When we paid, Jerry used his debit card, and it was declined. That was really odd, because I knew we had money in our account. The cashier ran it through twice, and both times it said declined. I felt a little panicked when we got home, and I looked up our account online. Nothing looked too unusual, other than a few authorization holds that were pending and I had no idea what they were (but again, not that unusual).
Today, Jerry called the bank to find out what was going on, and it turns out that while we were in New York, someone stole Jerry's debit card info, and yesterday, they had a little shopping spree in New York. There was only ONE spot that we used the debit card while we were gone (we used cash everywhere else), so we know exactly where it was. It infuriates me that someone did that! I know it happens to people fairly often these days, but that's the first time we ever had an issue like that.
The bank flagged the card and froze our account when they saw some charges for hundreds of dollars in NY. We won't be responsible for those charges, but now we need new debit cards because we can't use ours. The cards take 14 days to get here, so we'll just have to start using cash only for a while--that's going to be hard to get used to, because I very rarely carry cash with me.
So, anyway, it's kind of a mess right now, but hopefully the bank will get it all sorted out soon. I found it pretty funny that a couple of the charges on the card were $60 for Burger King and $50 for Wendy's--who spends that much money on fast food in one day?! I also had to laugh at the irony... I was in NY to learn about financial security, and while I was there, my bank account info was hacked ;)
