Mother Racer

I took my 3rd child to her speech class today. Now I do let my kids dress themselves with my help every once in awhile… But I did miss this one simple thing with my daughter’s dress attire…

She actually does this a lot and maybe it is my lack of not being to picky with what they wear that leads to this. Sometimes she will go to school with 3 dresses on at one time… I think it is cute! She did great today in speech, though.

After school I allowed the girls to have their friends come… We worked on crafts and ate cookies. It was a huge mess but they were entertained for a good hour (and quiet)!

My neighbor came over for 45 minutes (after the girls were in bed) so I could go support another neighbor with a business (Posh) she is starting out with. I found out we were going to be pampered. I wish I had longer. 😉

The product felt great on my legs and feet but I was not able to stay too long to try everything out. Corom had to work late tonight…

Amber and I met up at 5:30 a.m. We began with a 1 1/2 mile warm up and that put us at the bottom of Harry’s Hill. (Harry’s Hill is a steep mile long climb up hill.) I ran 4 x 3 minutes hard up. A recovery jog back down (which ended up being 3 min down with the downhill). It was a continuous run. We then ran a 5th one up but it was 90 seconds. My legs were on fire! They hurt, they were like jello and I was grateful when we finished the last one. We ran a cool down but at a good solid pace. We finished off with a couple of strides. I put in about 11 miles in 1:14.14. It was a good run today. I came home and Corom was running on the treadmill. I think he went for 40/45 minutes. 🙂

Let’s see.. After I drove to and from running this morning (20 to 25 min each way), I drove the girls and a few others to school. Then I headed up to my sisters (40 minutes away) to pick up my nephew to bring him back to our doctor (Fullmer in Payson) to check out his ears. His doctor was unable to get him in… Anyway… After driving to the pharmacy to get medicine, I had to pick up my preschooler and a couple of other kids for carpool, then my kindergartener and another couple of kids for carpool. After I fed all the kids lunch, my girls and nephew loaded up to head back to my sisters (where my mom is watching her kids). The school called and my oldest’s ears were hurting her, so I turned around and picked her up. I drove 40 min back to my sister’s house dropped my nephew off and took my oldest to Doctor Fullmer’s office. Yep… She didn’t have an earache. 🙂 Well I’m glad she didn’t have one…
Then we went straight to indoor track practice… My girls are in training:

I sent the kids on a 2 mile warmup run before they began their 1200 repeats. 🙂 We have a 1200 meter loop (3 laps around the track) across the street from the high school.

They ran them hard- mile to 2 mile race pace- the loop has little rolling hills that made it a little more challenging. They ran 4 that way and then the 5th was about 30 seconds slower. They had a 5 minute rest in between each 1200.

During their workout I drove my 2 older girls up to piano/violin practice.

After the high school kids were done with their workout, they went on a 2 mile cool down, did their strides and one legged hops. They did a great job today… Hard but good workout! Oh and in the middle of the workout I happened to turn around to catch my youngest using the restroom just right off the pathway… Thank goodness no one was around. That is something Corom taught them!

I picked my girls up from piano, dropped Z (our foreign exchange student) off at her friend’s, came home and hurried and made dinner, then Corom, the girls and I went to pack night (scouts)…

Corom stayed at his scouts and later I watched the bachelor with my friends. 🙂

I met up with a few people (Blake, Jacob, Tris, Amber and Katie) this morning at 5:45 for a warm up run before the downhill mile repeats. We ran a 15 minute warmup to the top of the MTC/Temple mile start.

My 1st one was 2 seconds faster than my 1st time doing them. I ran a 5:18 2 weeks ago and this morning ran a 5:16. I felt pretty good! The 2nd mile was a 5:14 (3 sec faster than 2 weeks ago) and the 3rd mile was 5:13 (7 sec faster). I felt really good on the 2nd one also but the 3rd my legs were shot. I thought about doing a 4th but as I was running the 3rd knew that that was it. I was so excited to have been able to finish off strong. We finished with a 3 mile cool down, 2 strides (fast sprint) and the 2 x 50 leg hops. I felt good at the end but my legs are tired. We ran about 10 1/2 miles this morning.

Downhill- There are a few reasons I like doing speed downhill. 1) Most races in Utah are downhill and people are usually ill prepared for those conditions because they don’t train under them. 2) Running downhill you can go faster than flat running with less effort. So you reap more neuromuscular benefits (i.e. Training your legs to move fast) than just running intervals on a track. 3) And it is psychologically beneficial running fast!

Hops- In most plyometric exercises, the goal is either to move the limb beyond its standard range used with running or to isolate and work on a specific aspect of running form. One legged hops help work on the stance and push off phase of the footstrike. Also it helps the neuromuscular aspect of cadence by training you to move your legs quickly.

I went over to my sister’s house to help my mom this morning with the sick kids and doctor’s appointments. (Corom took the 2 older girls to school for me this morning and I took the 2 younger ones up with me.) I did make it back in time to do the testing in my 2nd daughter’s kindergarten class.

I like helping out with the testing because I can see where my daughters do well and where they need to improve. My 2 younger ones watched a movie on a little DVD player and my oldest daughter and her friends came to say hi…

For lunch a few friends came over with their kids and hung out and then it was time to go to indoor track practice… They went on an 8 1/2 mile run and it was so beautiful out!

The 1st half was a good up hill climb and then the rest was flat and down. I told a few of the runners that felt good and wanted to push it a little more to use the downhill to pick up their speed. A little mini tempo.

As the high school kids were running, my girls and I followed them around in the car. I would stop at certain mile markers and wait for the runners. My girls would love it because they would get out and play…

For Family Home Evening we had some neighbors over (for dinner and dessert). We all had a good time.

Now it is off to bed for me…