I love to run. I will happily dedicate hours of any given day to running but you ask me to carve out time for strength training and I am likely to all of a sudden “run out of time.” I enjoy the feeling of getting stronger, of stretching out newly used muscles, and the overall satisfaction of working new muscles. However, in years of exercising I have never stuck with any consistent strength routine. I get bored. I forget the exercises. I slack off on repititions. I don’t do enough sets.
I am not opposed to strength training and it’s not like the actual exercises are so hard I can’t do them, it’s that building and then sticking to a routine is extremely challenging. In my new quest to confront the things I’ve been avoiding, I am going to be customizing some strength routines for myself based on exercises I’ve done over the years, read about, and watched others do at the gym. I have chosen to put together routines to tone and strengthen my arms, back, legs, and of course abs. Ab and core exercises are actually the only thing I do consistently and enjoy almost as much as running. Continue reading
When I decided I wanted to run a marathon it was last October and I was only slightly enamored with the idea. Knowing that I might get serious about it, I continued to run through November and December but only put in 9-12 miles a week, maybe a little more on warmer days. By the end of December I had committed myself to the March 1st marathon and my running friend and I decided we would officialy start training January 3rd.