Are you prepared...to run?

A couple of weeks ago our family attended a preparedness fair hosted by a local LDS church.  There were many booths set up around a gym and one of these offered fitness assessments. I hadn't really thought about fitness being part of being part of preparing for a natural disaster (or zombie apocalypse), but it makes sense.

My boys were eager to do the step test at the fitness booth, so we made our way there. After the boys finished stepping, I was invited to take the assessment. With some hesitation I agreed. The short of it is that my level of fitness is variable. I was pleasantly surprised to earn the "excellent" rating for strength and was glad to have at least made the "average" range for flexibility (one inch away from "excellent"). However, I was just shy of the "average" rating for endurance (as measured by the step test). The trainer recommended what DagoodS has promoted before: interval training during my runs. She guessed that by the time I kick my 11 minute mile up to a 10 minute mile, I'll be into the average range on endurance. Now that I've begun interval training, I understand how this is a great challenge to the cardiovascular system (and to my ego!).

My whole family is now challenging themselves as well. My husband has begun training for his eventual 10 mile race and my boys have taken on the couch-to-5K program. There is an app for it, of course, complete with a zombie trainer, that my youngest son finds quite captivating. Helping my sons run makes it a bit more difficult for me to make time to run for myself, but it's fun to have the whole family involved.  

I've also taken on another self-improvement project involving psychotherapy, but that will be a post for another day. (Hopefully sooner rather than later.)        

Still Jogging Along

This is a quick, uninspiring post about the mundane. Anyone still reading at this point? :) Just checking in saying that I'm still around and jogging even (albeit slowly). My whole family joined me recently at a 5K. My husband and I jogged and my boys ran/walked a fun run afterward. We all had a great time and my husband has decided to kill himself with some friends this spring at a Tough Mudder event (10 mile obstacle course). So, hopefully he'll get inspired to start training soon. I only ran 31 seconds faster than last year's 5K, so I need to get more motivated as well. Hopefully I'll avoid further knee problems to prevent getting derailed from running again. I think we'll do at least quarterly 5K races to keep motivated. My boys now want to work up to a 5K so they can run in the LuvMud event in Memphis next year. What boy doesn't like getting covered in mud? I'm happy to see family-wide interest in the races. Hopefully, we can keep the interest going!