Great workout today – first challenging workout in a while, and I love doing track work. The 5 x 1000s at ~5K pace (2 minutes jogging between) felt just right – hard, but not so hard that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t do another. The 6 x 400s were fairly easy with the 3 minutes of jogging in between, but that’s as it should be. These reps are more about developing speed, form, and getting used to a quicker leg turnover. Killing yourself on every one of these, being unable to maintain a consistent pace for all reps, and feeling like you couldn’t do anymore at the end are all signs that you need to slow down. I finished up with a good 15-20 minutes of stretching.

Tomorrow is a recovery day. Easy pace to increase blood flow, give muscles broken down from the previous time to recover.

Tomorrow’s run: 6 miles easy

Supplemental: 3 x 20 bent lateral raises, 3 sets of dumbbell curls (I’d do pull-ups but don’t have a bar), either planks or crunches. I do the bent lateral raises for posterior deltoids, because, well, a well-defined posterior delt looks cool! The image below shows the form. You can also do these standing, but I don’t like it because the tendency to use legs and lower back is hard to avoid when standing. From the seated position, the legs are neutralized, and if you rest your chest on your thighs, your lower back is pretty well neutralized also. I do very light weight here – just 15lb. dumbbells. I also do my curls with 15lb dumbbells, for the simple reason that the only thing I have is 15 pounders. My sets are usually 30 or so reps apiece though. I don’t focus much on biceps because, for whatever reason, my biceps tend to stay pretty well-toned without a lot of effort.

Bent lateral raises