Do I get an "A" for effort?

It's taken me some time but I feel like I'm finally getting back on track with my fitness. Have you ever been off for a week and suddenly a week turns into a month or even longer? I never completely stopped running but my weekly mileage took a huge nose dive. Thankfully everyone is finally feeling better after our Toronto trip so I've been able to kick things into high gear.

I haven't been working out with my mom friends because it's so hot around 10am when we start and my little one likes to run around while I exercise. I'm a bit concerned about having her out in the heat even though I bring ice cold water and have her in cool clothes with sunblock. There have been times when I've taken her to the park and she got so flush so quickly. I just don't want to take that risk. 

So I've been working out at home.

I want to get leaner so I've been weight training with fifteen pound weights. I try and workout at least three times a week. In addition to working out I've been adding some effort-based sessions to my running. Effort session are tempo runs, hills and intervals. The running group that I'm a member of has tempo runs and hill workouts once a week. 

I know this isn't a large hill considering I'm in south Florida but we work with what we got.

Last week our hill workout consisted of:

• Ten minute warm-up 
• Five minute tempo run
• 4 x sprint up the hill and jog back down
• 3 x 30 sec. sprint (on flat ground) with 30 sec. recovery jog
• 4 x up, over, down and back on hill
• 3 x 30 sec. sprint with 30 sec. recovery jog
• Cool down

Though I feel like my lungs are about to collapse on me in this crazy heat and humidity, I know these sessions are helping.

For my long run today I was able to maintain a nine minute mile pace. While that's a pace that I've been able to maintain for a while now, it didn't feel as rough as it normally did. There were even some splits when I was running at an 8:45 pace. Considering this heat was getting to me about 30 minutes into this run, I was pretty pleased with how well I did.

I got a chance to really break in my new capri pants.

I found these at T.J. Maxx for about $18 dollars. I was in need of a new pair of pants since one pair was literally coming apart at the seams. I'm trying to add some colors and patterns to my wardrobe since I mostly have black.

Two weeks of adding effort sessions and weight training and I think I'll have a great base to work with when I start marathon training at the end of this month.

*side note* My oldest daughter had a minor setback in volleyball. Last week we were practicing her serves and her shoulder came out of the socket. This has been the fourth time that this has happened and each time it gets worse. She's been doing some cross training to build up her strength but it hasn't seemed to help her shoulder. Her volleyball coach said that's not normal and she has a sports doctor that we can meet with. My daughter is pretty upset about this and is concerned about how this will affect her training and overall ability to play volleyball. Until we see the doctor there isn't much that we can do for now.