70 Degrees in December???

Philly got awful close to hitting 70 degrees. Nuts! I even saw a bee on Monday. Damn you bees!!!

I haven't been blogging as much as I'd want to lately, but tis the season! I hope to be back on track after the holidays. I still get my workouts in though.

Yesterday, I was going to take the day off since I had that 5 miler on Sunday, but I didn't. I went to the gym and did a 1/2 hour on the elliptical and worked on upper body. I guess I worked out harder than I thought coz my arms were pretty sore this morning.

Today, I did P90X Core Synergistics, which I haven't done in over a year with Zim and then we ran 2 plus miles afterwards. Core wasn't too crazy, but I sweat my butt off. Then I felt I had to take advantage of the unseasonably nice weather and ran a slower paced jog.

Off to bed!

Brian's Run 5 miler

Sunday at 1pm, the gang and I, ran Brian's Run. It was a 5 mile run, which I swear was all uphill. It was a pretty tough race with over 900 runners. I came in at 42:08. Not my best time, but had fun running it!

Burn Off the Bird 5K

Saturday morning at 9am was Phoenixville's annual 5K, Burn Off the Bird. Zim, his mom and I headed to the race after 8am. We met more of Zim's family there and our good friend Brian. It was windy out with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees. Pretty chilly. About 200 runners showed up all bundled up. I've run this race before, and it's full of hills. It's a challenging course.

We all lined up and the bell went off I saw Zim and Brian take off like jack rabbits per usual. I got about 40 seconds into my run when my phone popped out of my pocket and hit the ground. Luckily I have a good case! I scooped up my phone and almost got run over by 10 runners. I got back into the run and felt good. Zim finished 1st in our little group at 22:38 and running on a bad leg. Not bad at all! He came in 4th in his age group as well. I came in next at 24:53. I medaled, coming in 1st in my age group. Woot! Brian came in at 26 minutes and Zim's mom at 41:20. Cathy took off at least 3 minutes from her last 5K. REALLY awesome!

We all had a blast and will do it again next year!

Getting back to the workouts, I took Sunday off and got back into the swing of things today. I ran 4 miles, worked in upper body with P90X chest & back, and finished with some abs. Tough. Shouldn't have had those last two drinks! Oh well!

Playlist: Brown Bird

Warrior Training

Last night I tried Warrior Training at the Dojo. It went really well. It consisted of an intense warm-up, followed by stretching. Then we did of metabolic interval training. Five stations were set up. The first station involved a small medicine ball while doing pretty much a mason twist as fast as you can. The 2nd was pushing a 35 pound weight 30 feet while in bear crawl position. 3rd was sprinting knees up through an agility ladder. 4th was doing a 30 foot sprint while a partner held you back by some resistance with a rope. Last we're push-ups. We went thru these for 30 seconds each, with 30 second breaks in between. Then we went thru them again for 1 minute followed by a 10 second break. Pretty damn tough. We ended with a "hurricane". 30 second sprint with resistance, followed by laying down and meeting your leg with you hands holding a medicine ball (crunch) 30 times, followed by 30 mason twists as fast as you can. Repeat 2 more times. TOUGH.

It was a different and fun workout which I'm interested in trying again. It reminded me of the cardio and plyo parts of P90X, Insanity, Asylum, and Cross-Fit.

Today I went for a nice 4.65 run in over 38 minutes. Nice workout before turkey time! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving Eve

One of my favorite days of the year!! I worked in the morning and came home to run 3.15 miles in a little over 25 minutes. I wanted to get a run in this nice weather before the cold air rolls in on Saturday. At 6pm Zim and I (plus a few of our friends) are going to my friend Paul's Dojo to try the "Training For Warriors" program. Tonight is a free introduction running from 6-7:30. Seems pretty interesting. Even nicer to see and support Paul Jackson! Hope I work up a good sweat and receive a butt kicking! Then I'll ruin it all with some beers and vodka later tonight!

Yesterday Chelsea looked quite piss poor and tried a defensive strategy that they've really never done before. Well, it didn't work and Chelsea went down 3-0 to Juventus. They need to win their next Champions league match and need Shakhtar Donetsk to win their match against Juventus. So they still have a chance to move out of their table, they just need the stars to align a little bit. In the wake of this month's skid downwards, Chelsea dismissed head manager Roberto Di Matteo and replaced him with Rafa Benitez. I find this very unfair to RDM, the man came in as an interim coach more than halfway thru the season last year and helped to find a broken team some new light. As an interim manager he won the FA Cup and the MUCH MUCH coveted Champions League of Europe trophy last year. Quite impressive. Chelsea in the month of November has hit a bad streak of a few matches and MAY be out of the Champion's league. They are sitting in 3rd place in the premiership and still can go through the group stage if all goes right in the next Champion's matches. I just think it's too soon. He should have been given until January or if they were eliminated from the Champions League. I'm totally disgusted with this revolving door of coaches. Just my rant of the day. Sunday's match against Man City will be interesting. Hopefully Rafa can improve Torres's level of play and confidence like he did in Liverpool. Oh the drama!

Get Your Game Face On

Get ready to burn off that turkey!!!

Boring Old Tuesday

Today was definately an elliptical day. I'm actually not that sore from yesterday but I didn't want to do a tough workout. I did a half hour on the elliptical, then about 25 minutes of leg work on the machines, and finished with abs. Worked out for a little over an hour.

Juventus v Chelsea is on right now so I'm cutting it short. Go Blues!!!