Taking It To the Track, Or Not

Happy Hump Day! It's hard to believe that it's already Wednesday. And that we're already two days into December. And 23 days away from Christmas, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Anyway, there's just two days left in this week, we have all of next week, and then final exams week. W H A T. This semester is flying! Have I even taught my students anything? I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks, right? But let's take a break from all the school talk and talk workouts.

Up to my neck in STAAR-style work. Hello, expository essays and short answer responses.

Last night I was inspired to go up to my high school's track and complete a speed workout. You guys, that's huge, because I - even though I played volleyball for 10 years of my life - hate sprinting. Give me a 10-miler any day of the week. But I know that speed work is important for marathon training, and seeing as my marathon is happening in S I X weeks from this upcoming Sunday, I felt like I'd better hop to it. However, when I got there, I was disappointed to see that the gates were locked, and there was no way to access the track. I may have jumped the fence once or twice in my day (just to get in a workout, okay), but last night was not that night. So, I headed right up the road to the MAC and put myself through the ringer with this stairs workout.

Let's break it down. This workout was obviously very stair-heavy, as I did five sets of 10 of them. My quads and calves were hurtin' this morning. But my arms and inner thighs (shout out to those wide-leg squats) were also feeling the burn. That's because in between stairs sets, I completed various supersets. I love supersets because you get all of the exercises done in the same interval. Once you've done pushups, you've done pushups. The time also seems to fly, which is obviously a huge perk. Three sets made up one superset, meaning I did 15 bicep curls, 10 shoulder t's, and 15 back extensions three times, before making my way outside for another set of stairs. I tried to work my entire body, while still getting in some good cardio. I've been called "Krazy Kardio Kelli" once or twice in my day. Anyway, the "one lap" is very vague, and while most would assume it's one lap around a track, I simply ran a lap on the track that encompasses the MAC's two pools. Definitely not equivalent to a 400m track, but that was about all I needed. And finally, I pulled out one of the most versatile pieces of equipment out there: the cone. There are endless exercises that can be done with the cone, and I'm excited to start integrating them into my workouts. For last night's workout, I simply lined up six of them, hopped over them, and jogged back to the start. I repeated that five times, and started my superset over. All-in-all, a fantastic workout that left me nice and sweaty. And completed in about 45 minutes. Can't beat that.

And with that, I'm off to cross a few things off of my to-do list. Like I said, it's that crazy time of year. And I'm trying to stay on top of my game. Have a great one!