Weekly Workouts

I ran 33 miles this week. Seems like I get some hammy pain randomly, which is weird. My hammy has never bothered me before. Guess I will baby it again next week!

Saturday- 8 miles! I ran in shorts and this run felt great! My legs felt strong and my hammy felt completely normal.

Sunday- 6 miles! In shorts again. I felt an "awareness" in my hammy. WTF? Then I went to Zumba for the first time in a couple years! It was so fun and I was absolutely exhausted by the time it was over.

Monday- Lifting back @ home. I basically did this workout. Unfortunately, I had horrible sleep the night before. I went to bed around 9:30-10:00 and woke up at 1:30 when Paul came to bed... and didn't fall back asleep. It was absolutely horrible. But I'm proud of myself for actually doing my normal workout and nothing lighter/easier even though I barely slept.

Tuesday- Lifting chest @ home. Since I finally got good sleep, I powered through this workout faster than usual.

Wednesday- 6 miles before heading to NYC! I looked ridiculous because my "good" winter running gear was packed! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture!

Thursday- 7.5 miles in Central Park. With only two hours of sleep, I was a little delirious on this run...

Friday- 5.5 miles. Of course I had to end the week on a round number! Now my hammy hurt a little during this run. WTF? I thought it was healed? Oh well. I am running trail tomorrow and then I will rest it for two days and lift. Blah.

What's the least amount of sleep you ever ran on?

Friday 5 - NYC!

Hey all! I am linking up with Running on Happy and Fairytales and Fitness for Friday 5 2.0!

Today I'm going to share a sneak peak about what we have been doing the past two days... We took a quick trip to NYC to see a live taping of Survivor Know It Alls!

Here are 5 pictures from our trip!

1. We were dead set on going to the after party, so we drank coffee and Diet Mountain Dew all day. Here we are, pre gaming in the hotel!

2. I met Rob Cesternino again!

 3. We made it to the after party! We'll sleep when we're dead...

4. ...And we may die a little earlier because at 1:30am, we ate McDonald's on Times Square!

5. Somehow, I managed to get up at 5:30am the next morning (on only two hours sleep!) to run 7.5 miles in Central Park! I'm a bit delirious on this picture...

I'll talk more about our trip and give you the play by play on Sunday!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Survey Responses

A couple weeks ago, I posted a two question survey for Meg Go Run readers to fill out. The main purpose of the survey was to see if people enjoyed other topics besides running. Specifically, I wondered if people cared that a lot of times I write about my day to day life.

I was hoping to get more responses, but I did get 42! So thank you to everyone who to the time to answer!

Let's break down the results!

Question 1: What are your favorite topics to read about on Meg Go Run?

As you can see by the results, most of my readers enjoy Day to Day Life posts the most! Running is a close second. Many people checked several boxes, so even though some people did pick Issues Facing America and True Crime, I don't think anyone picked just those. Does that make sense?

It also looks like some of you would like some guest posts from Paul I will try to make that happen! He is quite funny and has done guest posts before.

Here's a more specific breakdown:

Answer Choices–	Responses–
– Running	69.05% 29
– Lifting	28.57% 12
– Cats	40.48% 17
– Day-To-Day-Life	88.10% 37
– Issues Facing America	19.05% 8
– True Crime (aka MURDERS)	16.67% 7
– Guest Posts by Paul	40.48% 17
Total Respondents: 42

Question 2: What are your least favorite topics to read about on Meg Go Run?

No one picked Day to Day Life! Whew! True Crime, Issues Facing America, and Lifting are the least favorite topics of readers, which makes complete sense to me. I try to post my political rants and true crime geek outs on Sundays because I know less people care about those topics and less people read that day. So I think it works out...

Here's a more specific breakdown:

Answer Choices–	Responses–
– Running	8.82% 3
– Lifting	29.41% 10
– Cats	17.65% 6
– Day-To-Day Life	0.00% 0
– Issues Facing America	32.35% 11
– True Crime (aka MURDERS)	50.00% 17
– Guest Posts by Paul	2.94% 1
Total Respondents: 34

Thanks to everyone who answered my survey!

Sprinting to the finish line!

When I was driving home from work on Friday afternoon, I felt absolutely exhausted! My voice was shot, my body was tired, and I was dripping with sweat.

I didn't feel like this all day, I thought to myself. I feel like I am absolutely spent. Thank goodness I didn't start to feel this way until the end of the day!

And then I realized... I conserve my energy throughout the work week, and then by Friday, I allow myself to expend whatever extra energy I have left! By my last class of the day on Friday I go hard until I have nothing left in me.

It reminded me of racing! We try to pace ourselves and conserve our energy so we can make it to the finish line without crashing... But I don't know about you, but when I see that finish line in sight, I sprint and bust out whatever I have left in me!

Do you try to conserve some of your energy so you make it to the end of the work week?
Do you sprint to the finish at the end of races?

All nitty gritty details about my chest workouts.

Check out my post from last week about my back workouts!

In my weekly workouts, I used to list all the exercises I do when I lift. But then I stopped because I didn't think anyone really cared! Plus, I am a creature of habit, and good or bad, I normally do the same thing each time, so I figured it was useless to keep posting it. However, since I haven't elaborated on my lifting for awhile and a reader requested that I explain more exactly what I do, I figured it was a good time to write a post about what exact exercises I do when I lift and what equipment I use.

Today, I will give you the nitty gritty details about my chest workouts!

When I lift chest, I do the upper body lifts, core exercises, and lower body strengthening exercises. Here's the break down of each of those types of exercises!

Upper Body:

Equipment- free weights, Perfect Push Ups, towel, piano bench, gloves (Even though I use gloves, I have a lot of callouses on my hands and they sometimes hurt when I lift!)

It should be noted that before I jump into my heavy lifts, I warm up with lighter weights. I warm up my rotator cuff, do chest press and shoulder press.

Chest Press

Even though we have an actual weight bench, it is large and takes up a lot of room. We keep that in the basement and I just lay on my extra piano bench with my head on the couch. It works just fine!

Push Ups

My dad got me these Perfect Push Up thingamabobs at a yard sale a year or two ago. Ever since I started using these, I never went back to "real" push ups. They put less stress on my shoulders and force me to use my chest and triceps.

Shoulder Press

After doing 100 push ups, it's really hard to do shoulder press! That's one of the reasons I haven't upped my weights in several years. I am always exhausted by the time I get to this exercise!

Tricep Dips

Since these are an isolation exercise, I do them last. I use the bay window and the couch! It's sort of weird, but it works!

I forgot to take this picture while I was working out so I posed for it in my jammies on Sunday morning!

That's right, I only do four lifts when I do chest. These are four quality exercises I can do at home. I personally would rather do several sets (5!) of quality exercises than the standard 3 sets of a bunch of different exercises that may not be as effective.

Lower Body:

**Note: I don't properly lift lower body anymore (aka squats, lunges, etc.) due to it aggravating my ITB. The following exercises are things I can do for my hips/glutes that don't bother my ITB. I miss properly lifting lower body A LOT.**

Equipment- towel

Donkey Kicks

Hydrants

Kickbacks

Core:

Equipment- towel, stability ball

Bicycle Crunches

Stability Ball Knee Tuck

Forearm Plank

Stability Ball Sit Ups

Okay, so now you are probably wondering how I put this all together. I do the workout in circuits. Most of the time it goes like this:

Chest Press- 5x10x30lb

Bicycle Crunches- 5x40

Donkey Kicks- 5x20

Push Ups- 10x10

Hydrants- 5x20

Shoulder Press- 5x10x20lb

Stability Ball Sit Ups- 5x15x15lb

Tricep Dips- 5x15

Stability Ball Knee Tuck- 5x15

Push Backs- 5x20

Forearm Planks- 5x1 minute

What are your favorite chest exercises to do?

Weekend Wrap Up

Happy Monday!

Here's what we were up to this weekend...

I woke up absolutely exhausted on Friday morning. The night before, our smoke alarm started beeping. It would beep once and wake me up, so I'd yell for Paul (who was awake on his computer in the basement) to take care of it. Well, just after I would fall asleep, it would beep AGAIN. This happened at least four times and I now know why sleep deprivation is considered torture.

My 6 miler was slow but the best run I had all week!

Work was hectic. Even though we only had a three day week due to the snow, my patience was shot.

After work I did my usual... puzzle, cards with Paul, TV & dinner! It was a chill night.

I ran 8 miles in the afternoon and it felt absolutely great! In fact, my goal was 6 but I felt so good that I just kept going!

That evening, Paul and I had Bob and Rachel over for dinner and games. Paul is entering a chili cook off contest in a couple months so he wanted to test his chili recipe on some critics!

 For the record, the chili was banging!

And I think we had the most fun we ever had during a game night!

"Move together for a picture!"

I had a lazy morning and then I finally went out for a 6 miler. I felt an awareness in my hammy! Crap! But it didn't get worse so I completed my run...

... and then went to ZUMBA for the first time in a couple years! OMG it was so fun! If you live in the area, check out Zumba with Cat. It is the best $5 you will ever spend on a workout!

I was depleted by the time I got home so it was just puzzles and Seinfeld with Paul!

For dinner, I had a huge salad with 3 hard boiled eggs on it. I eat hard boiled eggs now!

This is what it looked like after the cheese and dressing was added...

I also put some of these on top! AREN'T THESE THE BEST!?

What? I didn't provide any cat pictures yet?

Tell me something fun you did this weekend!
Have you ever entered a cooking or baking contest?
Have you tried Zumba?

A freaking FREAKY dream!

On Saturday night, at 11:35pm. there were two loud quick knocks on our front door. My heart started beating fast and I basically froze. I grabbed my phone. 

"Paul, come up here," I called to him. 

"What's up?" he yelled from the basement. 

"The cats are fine, just come up," I said sternly. 

He came upstairs and I told him someone knocked on the door. We both hid in the bathroom and looked out the window. There was no one out there. Paul said he thought he heard kids laughing when he was in the basement. I guess it was probably kids knocking on doors and running away. But it really scared me...

It scared me so much that I had a dream about it that night. I dreamed I woke up the next morning and someone had put up a bunch of blow up reindeer in our yard. You know, like Christmas decorations. I thought to myself, "Oh, so that knock on the door was just someone playing a trick on us. They knocked on our door to show us the blow up reindeer." 

Paul and I went outside to look at the reindeer. That's when I noticed that there were papers taped to the reindeer. On the papers were drawings of Paul and I TIED UP!!!

I immediately realized this was a sick prank by a serial killer! I called 911 and the dispatcher assured me she'd be sending someone out to investigate. But before I even hung up the phone, all of my neighbors came over and started touching and messing with the crime scene. I started to scream at them to stop, they were ruining forensic evidence! No one stopped.

How freaking freaky is that dream? All because some idiot kids (probably) knocked on our door late at night!

What do you think this dream means???
Did anyone knock on your door in the middle of the night?