I think everyone who reads this blog knows that I recently accepted a new job and moved halfway across the country to Metro-west Massachusetts. I have been here for about 4 days, and have been extremely busy getting settled into my new home before starting work on Monday. My wonderful boyfriend helped me the first couple of days, I have a few close local friends who are accompanying me doing some furniture shopping, and my mom and sister are coming to town for the weekend. I am so thankful for all of the people in my life who are helping make this transition a lot easier!
Amidst the crazy, I have been trying to maintain as regular of a workout schedule as I can. While still in Chicago, it was easy- attend the regular group workouts. But, after toting my bike and my cats to NY for a weekend, I only managed to squeeze in one run. After moving to MA officially, I jumped back on the workout bandwagon on Tuesday morning. I bought myself a nice fluid bike trainer, and I decided to put it to good use while waiting for comcast to set up my internet (and additionally, it was pouring rain...). I adapted the group workout I was missing, and had my very first trainer bike ride. Not bad, though I am not totally sure how to figure out the proper resistance. I think that will take more practice. The trainer will come in handy much more in the winter, but I wanted to eliminate the possibility of slacking off while trying to find safe nearby roads to bike on. I found a local triathlon group that I plan to join, but I don't really have time to sacrifice to group workouts while I have guests dedicating their time to helping me get settled.
Wednesday morning I went out for a run in the new 'hood. The weather was gorgeous- after raining for 3 days straight, it was cooler and sunny. I again made up my own workout (coach will give me stuff to do but wanted to make sure i wasn't too overwhelmed during the move). I felt like doing longer intervals, so I did 2 x 10 min hard with 5 min easy in between. After warming up, I started my harder effort, and immediately noticed the hilly terrain that will now be my normal running route. The street I was running on had a long hill which encompassed the majority of my first 10 min interval. During my 5 min easy I turned around, and the second 10 minutes were largely downhill, and a lot faster. I have to figure out how to adjust for that...but I know the hills will be good training for me!
Today was the only 'free' day I had in this transition and settling week. I decided to pretend this was the weekend and do a longer workout, since my family will be in town this weekend so I don't want to disappear for 4-5 hours while they are setting up my furniture! In this area, there is a big movement to make paved bike trails where rail routes once were, but a lot of them are still in the works. I found a local rail trail about a half hour away, which was 7-ish miles long. There are plans to extend it further, but at the moment, this phase is complete, and it is nicely newly paved. I ended up going back and forth about 3x, but it was a lovely shady route, passing by a little lake, and lots of greenery. I really had a lovely time biking for about 2:15, and followed it up with a short 30 min run. It felt great to be on my bike outside after over a week, and I had a great solid workout.
Tomorrow I'm going to hit up the local Y and see about getting a swim in before a fun day of ikea/furniture shopping with friends.
I have decided that since my training friends that I am used to working out with several times a week are now so far away, I am going to try hard to be more diligent about blogging. My first fail is that I didn't bring my camera (or take out my iphone) on my bike ride today to get some pictures. This is unfortunate, because the scenery was absolutely beautiful. However, it was a lovely trail, and I am certain I'll be back there for some more workouts!
I'm glad that you're settling in! It was weird to not have you on the ride on Tuesday. There were just a few of us. Mostly due to the time change. We had 4 flats!! A couple were complete blow outs. It was awful. They removed a portion of Sheridan last week and then removed about an inch more on Monday. So there was a nice little lip. Today, however, it was as smooth as butter. The baddest of the bad part is gone. I've been meaning to update my blog. Will do soon!
ReplyDeleteMiss you lots! Mo