Crimbo Limbo

This is the time of year that I like to call “Crimbo Limbo”. For those of you not hailing from the British Isles, “Crimbo” is slang for Christmas. This is that awkward time of year between Christmas hols and New Years, compounded even more this year by the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday and Boxing Day fell on a Monday, so I didn’t actually get back to work until today (Wednesday). I’m leaving early-ish on Friday (hopefully) to visit the boyfriend in DC for our very first New Years Eve spent together in 3 years.

Running was a bit dodgy this week. I drove down to New Jersey on Friday night and got to the hotel I’d booked WAY earlier than planned (5 pm). With the weather good and me in fine spirits, I planned to just continue on, but decided to stop at the hotel anyway since I had paid for a room and figured I’d take a quick nap and go for a run. The a/c was making strange clicking noises for the whole 2 hour nap so it didn’t go as planned, but I did get on the treadmill. I was honestly not feeling the run, and cranked out 2 miles before heading back on the road.

Knowing that Christmas was imminent, I went for a run on Christmas Eve. 5 whole miles. It honestly felt great… knees were good, everything was good. I was just not really in that running frame of mind and the treadmill had a mounted TV with dodgy audio, so it made the run feel longer having to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians in one ear. I did a very quick upper body session on Christmas Day that was supposed to go longer but I was tuckered out from the travelling and the long run the day before, so I packed it in after 30 minutes.

I left late on Monday and arrived at 6 am yesterday morning, so yesterday was a write-off. Today I do plan to go for at least 4ish miles with my cousin. I’ve been eating junk food all week including MIL’s cookies and Buffalo Wild Wings (death), so it’ll be nice to get back on track. My cousin in Scotland will be getting married in February and I have a skintight red dress to fit into by then, so I NEED to get my shiz together.

I’ve noticed that I normally just post about my workouts and I feel that I should offer more to my loyal blog followers, so I’m going to offer up examples of my favourite workouts for other people to try.

Today is the Song Interval Session

I was talking to my boyfriend today about running music and how he makes fun of me that I have about 20 different running-related iPod playlists. One playlist is called “Song Intervals”. I basically create interval sessions based off of songs that I’m running too (fast songs, slow songs, etc). It goes a little like this:

I usually determine how long I want to run for first. Let’s say I want to do a 40 minute run. Each song on my playlist probably averages about 4 min/song, so running for 40 minutes, I’d go through about 10 songs, give or take.

Next, I determine my running speeds and how I plan to divvy up my song intervals. Do I want to increase speed during a fast chorus, or do I want to maintain one speed throughout an entire song? Depending on how ADD I feel that day, I usually go with one speed per song. I pick my speed intervals based on songs.

In a sample workout, I’ll maybe pick 6.0 mph for slower songs, 6.5 mph for mid-tempo songs, and 7.0 mph for fast songs. I have to bear in mind that two or three fast songs could come up in a row (when I set the iPod to shuffle), so I could conceivably have to maintain 7 mph for 10-15 minutes. This is why it’s best to be conservative when picking speeds.

Here’s a sample workout:

For example (just off my playlist now):

1. Drowning by Avicii ft Laura V (slowish – maintain 6.0 mph)

2. Long Way Down by Goo Goo Dolls (fast 7.0 mph)

3. Untouched by The Veronicas (fast 7.0 mph)

4. Drive My Soul by Lights (6.0 mph)

5. Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis (I call it mid-tempo, 6.5 mph)

6. C’Mon by Tiesto ft Busta Rhymes (fast 7.0 mph)

7. About You Now by Sugababes (mid 6.5 mph)

8. Without You by David Guetta ft Usher (6.0 mph)

9. Bury Your Head by Saosin (fast 7.0 mph)

10. Up by James Morrison ft Jessie J (slow 6.0 mph)

Let’s say each song was exactly 4 min, the workout would be 40 min with an average pace of 6.5 mph, therefore resulting in a 4.3 mile run with 518 calories burned (for me, a 160 lb woman).

Numbers will of course vary depending on the songs and the actual amount of time you spend running, but it generally ends up averaging out.

And all I had to do was just listen to 10 songs :)