Ok, I know that somewhere in my head I already knew this, but MAN what a differnce crosstraining makes in your running!! I'm getting reminded of this the hard way, unfortunately. The bootcamp class I attend went on sort of a hiatus over the summer...everyone just had so much going on that it was hard to have more than a few people consistently each week showing up, so it was hard for our trainer to justify the class...so we decided to take a break. The idea was that we would all keep up with some strength training on our own...ummmmm, yeah. Not so much. I tried, I really did, but I am sorry to say I just wasn't disciplined enough to keep it up, so I just stuck to running 3x per week in training for the ToT 10 miler. Well, I got a little "soft" around the edges, if you know what I mean, and slowed way down...which I attributed mostly to the harsh summer weather here in the south. Well, last night our class regrouped and HOLY CRAP was it an eye opener. I am positive that the heat was only about 50% of the reason my pace slowed so much...the other 50% was from not crosstraining. I'm so disappointed that I've lost so much of what I worked really hard for last year...I feel like I'm at square one again!!!



(and man, am I SORE today!) I used to be a BEAST at lunges (my trainer's FAVORITE!), and I attributed that to the running I was doing. Well, I was completely wrong!! It was the lunges that were helping me run better. We did a very short exercise last night that incorporated some lunges with a med ball (very tame combo compared to what we used to do) and I thought I was going to DIE. Legs shaking, quads felt like bricks...it was horrible! My awesome classmates were cheering me on to finish the last few and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, it hurt so bad...physically and mentally.
I'm hoping I don't forget this feeling and can get my behind in gear and not let this happen again. Learn from me Tinks...crosstrain!!!
So, with that...my class is only meeting once a week now and I really would like to throw in another day of some low-impact strength training (hand weights, kettle bells, ab work, etc.). I was wondering if anyone here uses a good strength training video (download or DVD) that they would recommend?