holiday runs

So I went on a few runs while I was home over the holidays. It was wonderful to run with my family again, it's been awhile!

I did a 5km run at the KC Irving Centre in Bathurst. It's an indoor track that surrounds a hockey rink:

It's a great place to run. It cost $2 (or you can buy a pass), and since it's beside the rink it stays pretty cool around 14C. And if you're lucky there may be people playing hockey which provides some free entertainment! Another plus is that you go the opposite direction of the walkers, therefore you don't have to be continually passing people. I went to this track and had an awesome run! I ended up running 5km in about 29 minutes.

A few days later I went on an 8km run with my dad, sister Nikki and brother in law Ray. It was super warm out so we decided to run around town. We were faced with some melting snow which lead to some wet feet, but it was warm enough that we didn't mind. Afterwards we took some photos:

99 red balloons

I finished up my final training session. I improved all the challenges we did! We competed in one challenge every week for the first 6 weeks, then we repeated the challenges to see if we improve. The challenges were:

- wall sit for time
- elbow plank for time
- number of push-ups
- 1.5 mile on a stationary bike at level 10
- # of burpees in a minute
- 1 mile run

So today we did the mile run. My original time was 8 minutes, 31 seconds. And today I ran it in 8:08. I'm really happy with this! Especially since I haven't been doing a lot of running recently. I was scared that I would not improve at all. I participated in this program from January-May of this year also. My original mile time was 11 minutes. At that time I was surprised that I was even able to run the whole thing. I think my second mile time (in May) was around 8:30. It's awesome to know that I am still improving!

Today I also took part in a unique fitness class. My roommate Julie is the assistant fitness director at UMaine. In addition taking part in a lot of the behind the scenes things, she also teaches fitness classes. She is honestly the best instructor I have ever had! She is moving on to a new job in Philadelphia, so today she taught her last class. She incorporated using balloons in the class which was pretty interesting and fun... and a lot harder than you'd think!

You can see me down in my squat! Somehow off time from the rest of the class?

The whole crew after the class. I'm in the pink tank top in the front row. Julie has on the white tank top in the very front. It was a great class and I wish all the best to her!