This has been a great, fun, and active weekend. I love it!
Friday night my husband and I did an impromptu 5k at Clearwater Beach. It was the last 5k in a series of 4, and now we wish we would have done all 4 of them. It was very casual, with around 200 runners, and it was a straight out and back along the beach. The sand was nice and packed down, and it was just like running on the road or sidewalk. At times I even forgot I was running on the sand.
I didn’t have a time goal in mind, and I fell into my normal pace of 11:30-12:00 minute miles. I was able to run the whole distance with my only stop being the half way water stop. I was excited! I am trying to cut down on my walking breaks, so this was a great feeling.
I couldn’t find my spibelt before the race, and I didn’t want to hold my camera, so I didn’t get any race pictures 
Now on to Crossfit…
Saturday morning, my husband and I went for a trial workout at a Crossfit gym that just opended in the area, called Crossfit Rebels (website coming soon, but here is their facebook page). My husband knows one of the owners, Sam, and I was excited to finally meet her too.
I still have a lot to learn about Crossfit, but my general understanding is that it’s a combination of strength and conditioning training, all done with minimal equipment and coaches to help and encourage you.
Our trial workout started with a portion of the standard Crossfit warmup, and it was a workout in itself! Sam and Ed, the owners (and coaches), were great about explaining the correct form for all the exercises, and they were very encouraging the whole time. I didn’t write down all the exact reps, but the warmup included the following:
- rowing machine
- sit ups
- a back exercise I don’t remember the name of
- squats
- chin-ups
- push-ups
Next up in our workout was a combination of two exercises:
- Doing squats while throwing a weighted ball against the wall
- Burpees (demo video in case you don’t know what they are)
Here was the setup for the squats and wall ball. When squatting, your butt has to touch a weighted ball that is sitting on the floor, and when throwing the other ball, it has to hit the X on the wall (the top row for me since I am tall!).
Once we practiced both exercises to make sure we were doing them right, our next challenge was to do 7 reps of each of these exercises, back-to-back, as many times as we could in 7 minutes. 7 minutes doesn’t seem to bad, right? WRONG! I was dying after about 1 minute, but Ed and Sam were great about pushing us to keep going. In the end, I got about 4 reps of each exercise in the 7 minutes, using a 15 pound weighted ball, or maybe it was 10 pounds. I don’t remember….but it felt heavy whatever it was!
Post 7-minute workout, we sat on the mats cooling off and drinking water. Oh yea, I forgot to mention, the gym area is not air conditioned!! There were a lot of fans and a good breeze from outside, but it was definitely hot.
Because the gym is just opening, not all of their services are available yet. In the next few months, they will also hold nutrition and cooking seminars, called Rebel Health. They have an awesome area set up. I can’t wait to start attending!
I am considering adding Crossfit to my workout schedule, but I am not sure how it will mesh with marathon training. I think the intensity of Crossfit would be a great supplement to my running, and I can probably remove at least one day of running from my schedule.
I am going to go back this week for a “real” workout to see what it’s like before I decide whether to join or not. I may have to play with the running schedule as I go to see how it works. I also like that in each class the workout is totally different. It ads variety and I think it would help keep me engaged, and make sure I don’t get bored with the workouts. They also marked a 1.6 mile running loop around the block, and some of the Crossfit workouts include running, which I like!
Here is the current schedule for classes, which works well for my schedule since I am not working. I would have plenty of times to choose from! If anyone local to Clearwater wants to check it out, let me know 
Whew, what a start to the weekend! I think I earned my rest day today!
