It’ll be a short blog post today, folks, because I’m pooped and ready for some much needed sleep!. I normally don’t go to bed before 2am, but today’s been a very long day and my body needs to rest. So, here we go!

1. I double tie the shoelaces on my running shoes because I have a constantly problem with them unraveling as I run. Nothing’s worse than having to stop and tie your shoelaces multiple times during a run! I curious to try Yankz! shoelaces.

Their two selling point is that their shoelaces customized the fit of your shoes to your feet because they have two points where you can adjust the laces, and you never have to tie or untie your laces again. You can simply slip your shoes off. I don’t know about you, but when I get home from a run, the first thing I want to do is take off my shoes but it takes longer than I’d like it to because I double knot. Ok, I know it’s just mere seconds, but those seconds feel like an eternity!

2. The Boy and I had a convo today about the future and where we see ourselves settling down. A long time ago I used to think that I would love to live somewhere else, even for just a year or two. But as time passes and as my parents get older, I find that I’m happier staying where I am. I have deep roots that tie me to LA.

3. It’s weeks like this week that remind me how important sleep is when you’re training. Normally, when I’m not focused on a goal and training hard, I tend to abuse my body and sleep only a few hours. And because I’m not exerting myself from training, my body can usually handle it fairly well. But not so now! For the past few mornings, I’ve been deprived of precious hours of sleep because my stupid association decided that the staircases outside our buildings needed to be redone. For the past TWO MORNINGS, I’ve woken up to the sounds of drills and hammers at 7 in the morning! Freaking bastards! Anyway, I’m totally feeling it now. I wasn’t able to do my P90X workout tonight and will have to double it up tomorrow. Friday night. Man my life is exciting ;)

So, that’s it everyone! Good night =)

I’ve gotten a few questions about P90X so I thought I’d write a post about my experience with it. =)

About the System
I’m sure many of you have seen the P90X commercials. But in case you haven’t, I’ve included the commercial below for your viewing pleasure ;)

This video is part 1 of 3. You can watch part 2 and part 3, if you’re interested.

So, you can see that P90X is touted as an extreme workout and nutritional system that will get you ripped in 3 months. The system is based on the idea that muscle confusion (i.e. doing lots of different types of exercises) will reap the fastest benefit and results. You work out 6 days a week and every day you do a different workout (Plyometrics, Cardio X, Core Synergistics, Kenpo, Yoga, and various weight routines).

The whole system is broken up into 3 phases.

• “Adaptive” phase - It lasts 4 weeks (3 weeks of hardcore workouts, 1 week of recovery) and is considered the fat shredding phase. During this phase, your diet consists mainly of protein and very, VERY little carbs.
• “Mastery” phase – It also lasts 4 weeks. During this phase, your carb and protein intake are pretty much even, and you start doing different workouts than the ones you did in phase 1.
• “Recovery” phase – It lasts for 5 weeks. Your workouts are a combination of phase 1 and phase 2 workouts, and your carb intake is around 60% of your diet.

What you need to know before you start

Know your current fitness
P90X is mostly for people who already have a fairly decent physical fitness base. They have Fit Test that you can take to see if you’ll be able to handle the workouts because they are pretty rigorous. For the Fit Test, you’ll have to do a series of pull ups, jumps, push-ups, squats, and biceps curls, and you’ll need to meet a certain number of them to be considered “fit” enough to do the system.

Equipment
You don’t really need a lot of equipment to do P90X, which is one of my favorite things about the system. At the very least, you’ll need resistance bands or a set of dumbbells. You’ll also need a yoga mat for the floor exercises. A heart rate monitor will also come in handy but it’s not completely necessary. You’ll also need a pull-up bar. Although, if you’re like me and you’re just starting to build up upper body strength and can’t really do a pull-up yet, it’s not necessary. You can get away with using the resistance bands with a door attachment (they’ll show you how to do it in the videos).

How it’ll impact your running
These workouts are no joke. They are really rigorous and they will beat the living daylights out of you. During my first week, my whole body was so sore that it was difficult to get out of bed in the mornings, or even to sit down like a normal person. Most of my friends who have done P90X have had similar experiences. If you want to complete P90X, you’ll have to commit to double workouts on some days: P90X + running. Because I use the FIRST method, I’m able to get away with doing only two double days. When I’m doing doubles, I usually do one workout in the morning and one in the evening.

My Experiences
I started P90X around the end of June last year. I managed to make it through phase 1 and half of phase 2 before I got sick and then I never was able to get back on it. I didn’t see any crazy results (i.e. I didn’t magically sprout a six pack), BUT I did feel a lot stronger and more fit. I started running more than I was walking. Before P90X, my run:walk interval was 5min:1min. During P90X, it was 1mile:1min. I was also running a lot faster, and my heart rate was lower during my fast paced runs. I found that my upper body and my core were strong enough to help me keep my form, even when I was tired at the end of a long run. I felt really solid during my runs.. almost invincible. The best part was, my ITBS problems went away because I was strengthening all the muscles that don’t get worked out when you run.

Overall, I think P90X is a great program. But as with all things, to see the results you see in the commercial, you really need to be dedicated to the workouts AND the nutritional side of the program. But I think if you can’t do the whole program as it is, you can still reap some great benefits by using some of the workouts as supplements to your current training schedule.

If you’d like to read more about my experiences with P90X, you can check out my posts under the P90X tag. And of course, if you have any questions, feel free to comment or email me at sheryl [at] runninginpigtails [d0t] com =)

This is my third month participating in NaBloPoMo.

For those new to NaBloPoMo, it’s a blog spin-off of NaNoWriMo. The two share the same goal: getting people to write. The only difference is that NaBloPoMo is for bloggers and happens every month with a different theme and NaNoWriMo happens once a year and the goal is to write a novel (50,000 words in the month of November).

The theme for NaBloPoMo this month is TIES. It can be interpreted literally or figuratively, and of course your posts don’t need to be related to the theme ALL the time. The goal is to write something everyday. So far, I’m on a two day streak ;) yay for me! hehe Hopefully, with February being a short month, I’ll finally have a successful month in my NaBloPoMo track record.

Starting a new thing here :) Every Monday, I’ll post about things that help motivate me to keep running, especially during times when I’d rather stay in my warm bed than put mileage on these tree trunk legs of mine.

First up! Daily Mile Challenges. If you’re a Daily Miler, add me as a friend! We can motivate each other =)

In case you’re not familiar with Daily Mile, it’s a site where you can keep track of your daily mileage and other workouts. You can input your workouts manually or you can import them directly from your Ipod if you have the Nike+ system. Garmin support is still pending. I can’t wait for this feature!

Daily Mile is also a type of social networking site (think Facebook). You can interact with other runners, send motivation, comment on their workouts and pictures, and write on their wall. They also have widgets that you can place on your site that displays your most current workout and a countdown to your races this year. They also have funny ones that tell you how many cheeseburgers or donuts you’ve earned!

But I think one of the best features on Daily Mile is their Challenges. Challenges are created by other users who want to set certain running goals and these challenges are typically open to the public, so anyone can join them. Some of the challenges I’m a part of right now are:

• Run 500 Miles in 2010
• Run 750 Miles in 2010
• Valentine’s Day 5k
• St. Patrick’s Day 10k

The first two are totally in line with my goal to run at least 500 miles this year and hopefully log more than 800 miles by year’s end. The Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day challenges are just for fun =) I love watching my numbers go up and watching how I compare to other people, even if they are strangers. It brings out the competitive side of me, and usually is enough to get me out the door. Plus, seeing how close I am to reaching my goals helps me visualize and keep in mind the task at hand.

So sign up, join some challenges, and hopefully we’ll be finishers by the time 2011 rolls around!  =)

A Slow Start
I kicked off this training cycle with a 3 miler at 12:55 pace (38:45), followed by another 3 miler at 12:31 pace (37:34). Both times I ran some sort of interval, although for the second run, I stuck more faithfully to 5:1 and felt the run went a lot better than the first one.

A Dash of Speed
Thennnnn, came the much dreaded speedwork. I didn’t used to dread it so much until I ran a horrendous 6×800m set a month or so ago and nearly died trying. I had never failed at speedwork before. It’s always been my thang! I’m hoping that after last week’s speedwork, it may be my thang again =) My goal was to hit each repeat at 2:49 with 1 min recoveries in between, and I ended up blowing that out of the water! I logged 2:20, 2:30, 2:21, 2:38. Yeah, baby! Did a mile warm-up (12:47) and a .65 walking/jogging cool down (9:28).

A Toughie
Two days later I tackled a short 2 mile tempo, and I am proud to say that I ran the whole way through! My tempo pace is suppose to be 12:15, but my real goal was to maintain an HR between 165-185 and to keep it in that range for at least 20 minutes. I usually do a 1 mile warm up, but I hit my target HR about half mile in, so I decided to just jump right into it. About 2 miles into the run (half a mile away from wrapping up the tempo portion), I started to feel really tired. My legs felt ok, but my upper body felt like it weighed a thousand tons. I fought the urge to walk and made it all the way through. The run ticked off: .5 warm up (5:58), 2 mile tempo (23:36 avg 11:45 pace – faster than my target pace!!!), then did a 1 mile cool down (14:23).

A First
Today, I did my first trail run. It was fairly short (only 1.5 mi) because I honestly didn’t really know my way around the park and I just wasn’t use to running on that terrain so I did a fair amount of walking and I did a lot of stopping to snap some pics. It was a beautiful day to be out.

I walked up this monster of a hill. It doesn’t look that steep from the pics, but holy bejeezus! That thing burned my butt like crazy. Then, I took one of the side trails to head on over to the lake.

I have my watch set to go off if I’m not in my HR target range. So, it was going off like crazy during the first 1.5 miles of this run because I was mostly walking and stopping to take pics.

I made my way over to the streets where I felt more at home =) I think I’d probably do better if I had trail shoes. I just didn’t feel comfortable in some of the terrain.

Horsie! Two of them actually =) It’s always neat watching people ride their horses around, and it’s a bit of a trip seeing them with a bunch of cars around.

Yeah, horse walking is that common in my neighborhood that they have their own crosswalk button! hehe =) I have a funny picture of me piggybacking on my friend’s back and pressing that button lol Yeah, we were bored and delirious.

So, anyway, the rest of the run was basically uneventful. Splits ticked off 14:02, 17:48, 13:31, 12:55. Ended strong! =)

That’s my training so far. Hoping for a good third week. Hope you guys had a great weekend!