Hill Work and Seaweed Salad

I have some catching up to do! Over the weekend, we made a great batch of chili and Cliff made homemade bratwursts. Casings and all!! I’ll get to those later…first up: today’s workout.

Technically, I was supposed to take today off but I just couldn’t do that (the long run this past weekend wasn’t that long… 🙂 ). I decided to run a little, but incorporate some inclines. I did the same running routine that I did a couple weeks ago from Shape magazine.

This routine is no joke. This was only my second time doing it, but towards the end I honestly didn’t know if I could finish. Those inclines are killer! I definitely recommend this workout whether you run regularly or not. If you want something that’ll make your heart pump and sweat like crazy, give it a try! Here were my running stats:

• Distance: 2.93 miles
• Time: 32:01 min/sec (that was with a walking cool-down of 2 minutes).
• Pace: 10: 55 min/sec
• Calories: 253

After the run, I did a quick exercise routine that I found in the Women’s Health book. This routine is filled under “Best Body-Weight Workouts.” I wanted to do something challenging and different, not just standard weight lifting. It was a pretty good, relatively short workout. After that run (which was probably plenty) it was perfect.

Here’s the routine:

• Iso-Explosive Jump Squat- 4 sets of 8. Basically, all you do is squat down, holding for about 5 seconds, then jump up as high as you can go, and land back in a squat. For this exercise, I placed both hands behind my head. The key to this was remembering to hold that squat for about 5 seconds before jumping up. They get pretty tough!
• Iso-Explosive Pushup- 3 sets of 8. You might be able to imagine what this one is like, pretty similar to the squats. In the standard pushup position, you lower down and hold for about 5 seconds, then push as hard as you can trying to get your hands off the floor. When you see people do pushups, then claps in between-this is what they’re doing. Except I can’t do the claps…I can barely get my hands off the floor. Maybe that should be a goal: claps in between pushups!
• Single Leg Hip Raise– 3 sets of 15 on both legs. You start laying down, face up with your knees bent. Raise one of your legs off the floor, straight up in front of you. Use your other leg to push your bottom off the floor, then back down again. So, you’re raising your hips off the floor, but only with one of your legs. You can also do this with both feet on the ground (an easier version).
• Inverted Shoulder Press– 3 sets of 8. This one is hard to explain. The best way I can explain it is, your basically in a downward facing dog position with your feet up on a bench. From there, you do a pushup. One thing I had to remind myself was to keep my butt up in the air (like down dog) otherwise you’re just doing an incline pushup. The inverted position works your shoulders and triceps more. You can definitely feel a difference when you shift your butt up in the air. Here’s an explanation of how to do this properly on a bench.

That was my workout for today! Like I said, that running routine alone is a great workout! Coupled with this short body weight workout, I’m pretty confident I had a calorie blasting workout session today.

After the gym, I put together a salad that turned out to be pretty tasty!

At the store today, I came across sweet seaweed snacks. For some reason, they sounded intriguing (maybe I was secretly inspired by Une Vie Saine.) I sprinkled some onto my salad along with spinach, apple, avocado, and chia seeds.

This seaweed is seriously awesome. I was just eating it out of the box. It’s salty with a little sweetness to it…very addicting.

This turned out to be a pretty good lunch. I’m a big fan of the seaweed-great replacement for chips (not that I sprinkle chips on my salad…but you get the idea).

Now I’m off to get some Mexican food and maybe a margarita or 5 🙂 .