Early days

Tuesday 1st January

I had been hoping to start the New Year with something hardcore, such as a long run or track session, but as I'd been training pretty much every day over the Christmas break and had sunk a fair bit of alcohol on New Year's Eve, decided to just run indoors today. I managed to run continuously for an hour, and covered 11.4km in that time despite starting very steadily. In any case, the main aim of treadmill sessions is purely to burn calories - and there are a few to burn off from the holiday season.

Followed up by practising some of the core work I had practised with Ali the day before, concentrating on the cable rotations/pushes/pulls and a few lunges, as well as the clean and press movement from body pump which needs honing. Building a strong core is key if I am going to take my running to a higher level.

Wednesday 2nd January

Back to work today, and back to the usual training routine i.e. Wednesday is cross-training day; body pump followed by spinning.

Opted to go a bit lighter with my weights in pump as Ali was teaching the new release (most of it at least) today. It takes a few goes before I know what my limit is with each track. Didn't find the music too inspiring, but know I'm going to struggle to use a heavy weight on that chest track.

Spinning was a bit disappointing, when I got in there my usual bike had been taken and I ended up with one of the crappy ones where the resistance is either non-existent or rock solid. Managed to improvise and sweated out an extra 700 calories..oh well that's one of the bottles of wine from Christmas burnt off..

Thursday 3rd January

Was hoping to do some hill reps tonight but it is now getting seriously cold outside and I couldn't face leaving the gym so ran indoors again. I'm not a big fan of this, but to be fair, at this juncture I will benefit more from losing a stone than I will from any amount of hill reps so I don't feel too bad about it. Had a very stop start session as I needed the toilet a couple of times (I have a bad habit of drinking too little water in the mornings and too much in the afternoons) and my MP3 was playing up.

Still, 8k in total, with a bit of speed work at the end and I did more of my core work, this time concentrating on ab work using the stability ball. Fell off the ball a couple of times doing the plank with toes on the ball, which was especially embarassing since someone from work was in the room at the time, but I soon got the hang of it. My abs aren't as strong as they need to be so I need to keep this up. 20 minutes of this after a treadmill session seems a good way to go about it.