Hot Steppin'

We got a taste of summer the past two days. And boy do I love summer, but heat and humidity can make exercising outside difficult. It's harder to breathe in the thick air and you can get dehydrated very quickly. At least this time it was just a taste...

On Wednesday I woke up nice and early to meet Deborah at the AU track for a workout. She joined the Couch to 5k program at AU this past semester and has since fallen in love with running. I helped time her workout and got in a few steps for myself jogging across the track to give her splits. She's getting faster each week - a truly awesome progression to observe. One of the things that I love so much about running is that somebody like Deborah can go from not being a runner to running 3 to 4 miles at a time in as little as 8 or 9 weeks.

Running is an inexpensive form of exercise that presents you with the freedom to explore. DC has tons of places to see by foot - the mall, rock creek park, the canal toe path...I could go on and on. I encourage you to walk - or run - to a new site over the long weekend.

After Deborah's workout I hit the trails myself. I ran 11 miles down to Roosevelt Island (another great place to explore) and then back up to AU. I finished up my run by jogging a mile barefoot on the AU soccer field. The rest of the day was spent in the office, but I was able to get up from my desk to visit the Farmers' Market and the Weight Watchers at Work meeting on campus. Both trips added to my total for the day. In all, I was happy with the amount of time I spent on my feet on Wednesday.

5/26/2010 | Daily Step Total = 25151

Thursday was another hot one. A REALLY hot one. Even at 7:00 for my morning run it was close to 80 degrees out. I ran 5 miles at home and then headed up to the office making sure to keep my water bottle close by all morning. After a day at work spent in front of the computer, I headed down to the track for my own workout.

I'm a distance runner but a lot of my teammates are middle distance runners. This means that they run shorter and faster than I do. There are other distance runners on the Pacers team, but some of them have been taking a little down time. That leaves me to workout alone sometimes and Thursday was one of those days. Coach let me toy with a "speed" workout - something usually left to the middle distance runners and sprinters. I ran 2x200m (my times were 31 sec. and 29 sec.) and then 3x600m (coming through my 400m splits were 63.0, 64.7, 63.8). I felt great to be running FAST in the heat. I finished up my workout with a 5 mile run through the trails where it was nice and cool. A smokin' hot day turned into a smokin' fast day on the track and I loved it.

What did you do to get in your steps on these two HOT HOT HOT days?

5/27/2010 | Daily Step Total = 29929