Newness

Happy New Year to those of you reading this blog. I hope you guys all had a great time celebrating and that your goals are off to a good start. Speaking of goals, one of my goals is to build some upper body strength and cross-train more. One of my co-workers came up with the idea of doing Active.com 30-day push-up challenge.

The idea behind the challenge is to do 100 push-ups a day for 30 days. This sounded like a great way for me to build some upper body strength and cross-train as well, so I decided to join in on the fun. Not having done an upper body workout in quite sometime would make this really challenging. My pecs, arms, forearms and hands were sore after day one.

My arms are still sore on the fifth day( I started a day late), but I believe things are getting better. I am looking forward to the end of the month when this challenge is done to see if there any changes. Pictures will be posted when this is over with. Like I mentioned earlier, upper body strengthening is something I want to stick with, so I will continue to do push-ups after the challenge is over.

I also got back into lower body workouts and even did an ab workout today (1/6/14). Working out the upper half of my body has never been fun, but I know it will be beneficial to my running; I will learn to enjoy and get motivated by others (Bexx).

GPS watch!

Unrelated to the push-up challenge, a friend of mine donated their old Garmin 610 to me! I am so thankful for this because a GPS watch is not something I can really afford right now. It is amazing and it just makes me want to run and analyze my runs all the time. It is really cool to upload my runs to Garmin connect and the breakdowns of my run.

I am still getting the hang of things because I have never owned a GPS watch before. I also love not having to use a GPS app on my phone. Not only does it save me from using data on my phone, but it also saves battery. These are two benefits that if anyone is looking that get a GPS watch that should be noted. The heart monitor feature is also cool. I will have to look into purchasing a heart rate monitor. I am looking forward to the ways that this watch will help me be better runner.

Unfortunately, it has been pretty cold here in Chicago the last few days and I have not been able to use the watch. As much as I want to run, there are days like last night and today where your health is a little more important. With that being said, I will attempt to run tomorrow when the high is 8 degrees!

Keep up the good work on the New Years resolutions or goals that you have.