Tuesday night was another Good Times 5K in downtown Lowell. This week's theme was "Rose Maguire's Great Mill Girl Chase", the girls get a two and a half minute head start and see how many of the guys they can hold off. My goal was to make it to the first mile marker before they caught us. The first 3 or 4 guys blew past me just after the water stop which is at about 3/4m, but I don't count them because they're ridiculously genetically blessed and run 5 minute miles, I'm pretty sure they're all Kenyan, no joke. The first of the Greater Lowell Road Runners, Jason Bui, passed me right at the first mile marker. I had gone out kind of fast for me and ran it in 7:40, the rest of the course is pretty much downhill so I was hoping to hold onto that pace and finish with a new PR, but that didn't happen. The wind picked up and I faded a little in the last 2 miles and ran 8:00s, but still really good considering I ran a marathon a week ago. Seems like a month ago now. I finished the race in 24:42 about 20 seconds off from a PR, next week I'll get it. I was 8th in my age group and only let 96 of the 163 men pass me. Ugghhhh, that's horrible. Guess it just means there are some really fast guys in Lowell.
Yesterday, I got creative with my workout and decided to have a little fun at the local playground with my friend Kim. It's exactly 1.5 miles from her house so we ran there, did an upper body workout on the playground. It consisted of:
3x10 Pull ups (or jump negs since were not quite strong enough to do real pull ups yet)
3x10 Push ups
3x10 Dips on the park benches
3x10 Incline push ups on the benches
3x 30 second Planks
3x10 invert rows, they have a perfect area for them with handles right at the right height
It was hilarious because as soon as we showed up and started the workout, we had an instant fan club following us around and trying to do the exercises with us. One little boy was like a mini-drill sergeant. He grabbed the piece of paper I had written the workout on and I asked him if he could read it and he said yes. So, I said will you tell us what's next on the list? He was more than happy to help and even tried to call us out if we skipped something or went out of order. He helped us count each rep. It was awesome.
We finished up the workout and ran back to Kim's house. With the weather getting nicer and Tough Mudder sneaking up on me, I might have to make this playground workout a daily routine. We can even do box jumps on the benches and hill sprints too! Oh and as if Tough Mudder isn't going to give me enough of a beating, I signed up for the Spartan Race yesterday, another obstacle course race. I ran it last year for fun, but this year I want to RACE it. It's not til the end of August, so I'll have time to recover.
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