Great Friends

Allison has been in town this weekend, and I am so grateful that we got to spend a little time together. An hour plus for breakfast and then church was definitely not enough time, but it was more than I've seen her since mid July, so I'm not complaining. We are going through some of the same things, and it was great to just be able to talk a few things out with a good friend.

Will is around, too, and I LOVE being able to work out with him. He makes me work hard, teaches me how to work right, and then encourages me when we finish. And he makes me want to know God more and live for Him better every day. I want to move to wherever he is so I can continually learn from him. But before that, I want to sit down and talk theology for a couple hours. Just for fun, no real point to the conversation, so I don't think it's going to happen. That's OK.

I ran a little 20-minute jog today, mainly to get my legs moving after yesterday's iso workout. Yep, definitely going to be even more sore tomorrow! I stayed in the neighborhood and focused on lifting my legs and dorsa flexing my ankles and pushing back up off the ground to propel myself forward and using my big muscles. Will saw me and said my form looked good (that's good, because at that point I was thinking more about who those people were who were waving at me than running right). It ended up being about 2 miles; the first 1.25 was at 7:45 pace or faster and the next 0.75 was slow while I worked on high knees and butt kicks.

Then we headed to Brentwood Y (who knew the CSY is closed on Sundays?) and did the following:

• Front-foot elevated lunge: 15 times, 10 sec on, 10 sec off, then switch legs
• Glute ham: 10 sets of 3 altitude drop 4 sets of 3 to top, 6 sets of 3 altitude drop
• Zurker (sp?) squat: 10 sets of 5 (hold light bar in crook of arms; focus on keeping chest up, shins perpendicular to ground, hips to the rear)
• Glute ham: 3 sets of 6 overspeed (have someone push you from bottom so you must stop yourself at top)
• Bench press: 20 sets of 1, 65 lb, a couple breaths between each set (focus on driving chest up the entire time—no lag between lowering and raising the bar)

The Z squat was the best, and then bench. The squat made me think about keeping my chest up and not hunching over while using the same muscles I'd be using while running. The bench again made me think about keeping my chest up; this will help especially in swimming if I really think about using my lats—the big muscles—to do most of the work. I will again be very sad when Will leaves, because I'll lose my personal trainer to distance again and will have to rely on the phone. Sad!