Running is SO Easy!

Treadmill_Trainer Volume 2

I just got in from an accidental run that turned out to be my fastest, happiest run to date!

Sitting at my computer enjoying some raw chocolate pudding and a fabulous green juice, I simply had too much energy to sit still.  So I got out my ipod, downloaded Treadmill_Trainer Volume 2 onto it, and set out for the boardwalk. 

This is the first time I’ve finished the entire workout, and I seriously had a smile on my face the whole time!  There are 2 spots where Yuri says you can stop, and I’ve taken him up on his offer times before, but I was in the zone and feeling like I could just kill the workout.  And I did!  I even ran home after I finished stretching!

I love his workouts and the way he talks to you as if he’s right there beside you.  I even talk back to him and answer all of his questions out loud!  For example, when the workout was over he asks: ”How are you feeling right now?” Amazing!  “How did you feel 10 minutes ago?”  Amazing!  “How did you feel when you woke up this morning?”  Umm…not this good…no.  (I had to talk myself into going to yoga this morning)  Then I patted myself on the back (because he told me to) and congratulated myself on running 10 k in approximately 45 minutes…and I’m not a runner!  For comparison, I ran a 5k in April and my time was 29:41…and I was dead tired and wanted to throw up…a lot.  What a difference!

I just recently started running, and I’ve only run two 10 k’s before tonight.  I ususally just do 5 k’s because I get bored of running after 30 minutes.  But since I signed up for a half marathon 5 months ago, and put off training until pretty much right now, it’s time to get serious…hence the Treadmill_Trainer series of workouts being downloaded to my ipod.  After tonight I feel certain I am going to have a competitive time in the run, and I really can’t wait to do it!  I think I’m going to do intervals during the run.  I’ll just listen to the Treadmill_Trainers even then.  That would be funny.  The motivation he gives during the workouts is priceless.  I’m seriously going to listen to the training audio when I run the race.

For more information, click the image above!

I should definitely add:  I highly recommend Volumes 2 and 3 plus all the hill running stuff, but only get Volume 1 if you are JUST starting out.  It involves walking and running, perfect for beginners, but you may find it too slow if you have any experience.  That being said, Volume 2 will kick your a** no matter what level of runner you are!  If you disagree and think you’re some big time runner, then you HAVE to try it.  It’ll step up your game so much and you’ll be thankful for the challenge!!! 

Happy running

 

Inspire your kids to love running with these tips

 

Staying Healthy in a Sick Economy

By: MANDY KATZ

ON Wall Street, when the going gets tough, will the tough get yoga mats?

Adding classes in yoga, meditation and other so-called mind-body regimens is just one way fitness professionals in the financial district are responding to recent economic uncertainties roiling their corporate clientele. Some are also offering shorter, cheaper personal training sessions and, in at least one health club, quiet discounts for members who lose their jobs.

Amid layoffs, concerns about staying buff could seem trivial. (Imagine the headline “World Markets Near Collapse: Muscle Tone Under Threat.) Yet, businesspeople themselves wonder how a perilous financial climate will affect their physical fitness — and if exercise could help them weather hard times.

Some struggle to squeeze in any workouts at all. But others, like Amy Sturtevant, an investment director for Oppenheimer & Company in Washington, find themselves doubling down on conditioning for relief. “Professionals are doing their best not to panic, but I know a lot of professionals who are panicking” about the markets, she said. “The only way to get away from it is to have some kind of outlet.”

Ms. Sturtevant, a mother of four, is training for her fourth marathon. With brokerage clients needing more hand-holding, she said, she stints on sleep rather than skip her 5 a.m. daily boot camp and 20-mile weekend runs.

But one of Ms. Sturtevant’s training partners, a portfolio manager, said in an e-mail message that she had not been as diligent as Ms. Sturtevant and had been “scarce” at their workouts. The portfolio manager said she had weathered some tough financial cycles, “but this one has been uniquely disabling.”

“Forget the 5 o’clock wake-up to run,” she wrote. “Who is sleeping?”

One business owner, Sheri David, is backsliding for business reasons. As chief executive of Impressions on Hold, a company based in New York that sells corporate voicemail systems, a tougher sales environment has meant Ms. David sees more of her customers and less of her personal trainer. Over the summer, she dropped from five sessions a week to three; by mid-September, she said, “it turned into one day for one hour.”

Her trainer, Chris Hall, chides Ms. David to make time and, when she does, to tune out her BlackBerry, she reported. “But I say, ‘You don’t understand — there’s 27,000 reasons I have to pay attention,’ ” referring to her accounts.

For his part, Mr. Hall — whose clients have included Catherine Zeta-Jones — is now offering 30-minute, “high-core, high-intensity” sessions and shared workouts, he said, “because people don’t necessarily have as much time as they used to, and they don’t want to spend as much money.”

According to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, there are 41.5 million health club members in the United States. To keep them on the roster, clubs may be willing to bargain. Most customers who quit the Telos Fitness Center in Dallas, for example, must pay to rejoin. But, for suddenly strapped longtime members, “I’ll put a note in their file and we’ll let them pick up their membership without any fees,” said Clarisa Duran, the center’s sales and marketing director.

For Plus One, which operates in-house fitness centers, corporate accounts are the issue; until recently, its major accounts included the investment banks Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Though still operating in all of those except Bear Stearns (which closed in March), the company now must look to its recent expansion in other regions and industries for growth, said Tom Maraday, the senior vice president. (Google is one new client.)

“We’re a little experienced with stress because we went through 9/11 down here,” said Grace DeSimone, Plus One’s national director of group fitness. When disaster strikes, she noted, demand for yoga goes up, and on-site gyms exert a special pull: “People come and they want someone to talk to — it’s like Cheers.”

And, as in a bar, the televisions stay on. “In the banks, we have to keep the news on,” Mr. Maraday said. But at Cadence Cycling and Multisport Centers, TV’s show training videos rather than CNBC, because “we want this to be an escape,” said Mikael Hanson, director of performance for Cadence in New York.

During the Bear Stearns collapse, as becalmed financiers sought their escape, midday classes at the in-house gym grew crowded, according to a former Bear Stearns trader who declined to be named. When the final ax fell, they lost not just jobs but access to a club offering “everything,” she recalled, a hint of longing in her voice.

“They even gave you the shirts and shorts so you didn’t have to worry about laundry.” Now she can no longer get in her daily 5:30 a.m. workout. Her new employer has no gym and, with the markets erupting, her workday starts even earlier. “I wish there was a gym that opened at 5 in midtown,” the trader said, “but there isn’t.”

Stephanie Shemin Feingold misses a cushy fitness center, too. Since leaving a Midtown law firm in June to work at a nonprofit in Harlem, she’s been using her apartment building’s spartan fitness room. “When there are only three treadmills, it can get crowded pretty quickly,” she said.

“I’m lucky if I get in 20 minutes instead of the hour I used to do,” Ms. Shemin Feingold said. “My pants are getting tight. I’m going to have to figure out a new routine, because I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”

Fitness matters more than ever if you’re laid off, career counselors advise, not just for health, but to network and stay positive. “The last thing you want is to gain 20 pounds during a job search, ” said Dr. Jan Cannon, author of “Finding a Job in a Slow Economy.” “That just compounds that sense of, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ”

Exercise, she added, can also spur creativity. “You know how we always have those ‘aha’ moments in the shower?” Dr. Cannon said. In the same way, “a good brisk walk can be very helpful.”

Jenny Herring, a Des Moines financial writer, usually walks or bikes for respite from the fulltime job search she began in June, after being downsized as part of the subprime mortgage fallout. But one day last month, feeling frustrated when her phone refused to ring, she varied the routine: “I said, I’m going to get outside, and I mowed the front and back yards” for exercise.

For a motivated few, extra time for conditioning actually proves a rare upside of unemployment. “A lot of people who are between jobs are using this downtime to go after a goal,” like a triathlon, said Mr. Hanson of Cadence Cycling.

Dr. Cannon recalled a client whose workouts last spring “got more frequent as time went on” — to block out the disappointment, and to give her something to get up and do every day.

“She lost 40 pounds.”

 

Julie Moss competing in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon

 

 

 

Triathlon in which she competed as part of the end of her research for her exercise physiology thesis at approximately two miles before the ironman was broadcasted live around.

 

 

 

 

 

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