Skating without the Celebrities

Hey guys! Tomorrow is Thursday! Woohoo!! Two more days and it's the weekend.

We'll be doing the Nashville Preds 5K on Saturday am and it's going to be a COLD one! Actually, it's been a cold one ever since we got back from Miami. Last weekend was mostly 30's so I ran on the treadmill. It's unbearably hard to go from tanks and shorts in Miami to running in full winter gear here. Brent wanted to run outside on the 1-mile hospital track Monday night, so being the supportive wife I went with him. I KNOW I won't be in normal 5K shape on Saturday, but I so desperately want to be. I'm my own stiffest competition. He wanted to run 3 fast miles at the track, and I tried my hardest to keep up but he ended up 30 seconds ahead of me. I wasn't as angry at myself when I looked at the splits later and I had started at 9.04, then 9.03, then 8.45 and the last .10 at 8.30. At least I had negative splits, but I should have been able to start at 8.30 and then work backwards. It was cold (33) so I'm going to blame some of it on that. It's snowing a little right now, and the high for Saturday is expected to be 40 so Saturday am probably won't be that different than our run Monday night.

Saturday night I wanted to do something DIFFERENT. Since it's been so cold we decided to do a cold weather activity - ice skating! We invited some friends to go but they really wanted to see Big Momma's House 2 AND she has a cold, so I wasn't interested in being a part of either of those activities. I wanted to MOVE! Burn some calories. First we had dinner at Cheeseburger Charlies over near Vanderbilt. I LOVE that part of town. You can walk to a ton of cool restaurants, and once we found an open parking meter that's just what we did. I had a yummy turkey burger and Brent had a normal burger. Mine was better. We walked back to our car and snow was lightly falling. The night was so crisp and beautiful. Then we saw a woman walking across the street. Not usual - except about 7 cats were following her. Seriously. We already had the camera out taking some pics of the beautiful night so Brent crosses the street tailing her trying to get a pic (unsuccessfully). Another young couple pulls up to an open meter and they're equally amused. I bet they would be fun to hang out with....












So off we head to Centennial Sportsplex for public skate. CS is part of the Metro Parks and has indoor pools, fitness center, classes, and TWO ice rinks. They're about half the price of our crappy local Y, I wish we lived closer so we could be members! Anyway, they have tons of public skate times, one of them being Saturday night. It was PACKED! People of all ages were there, but a lot of teens. The ice was full of people who obviously hadn't skated very much. There were also a lot of "hockey hoodlums" whizzing among the crowd. You really didn't need to worry about them because they know what they're doing. The others.....made random turns and had no peripheral vision whatsoever! I elbowed a few kids who tried to cross right in front of me. By the end of the night the ice had cleared a lot so it was much easier to get some speed and have more fun. We've been rollerblading for years and years, so we have the basics of ice skating down. We even played around with some turns -or as we call it "fancy skating". We left right before the rink closed and there was a long line of parents waiting to pick up their teens. Hilarious!!! It was fun and I'd definitely go again. It was a fun way to burn a few more calories on a Saturday night - while enjoying some pop music and a disco ball! (At any moment I thought we were going to get to do the hokey pokey or the limbo!)










Have a great rest of the week!

Rachel

Exercise Log-
Mon - 1 mile am walk with Pippin and Brent, 3.1 miles running outdoors w/Brent, 20 minutes toning/yoga - focus:abs w/Brent
Tues - 1 mile pm walk with Pippin and Brent, 15 minutes elliptical (until it broke....) 40 minutes yoga/toning focus:thighs/hips
Wed -1 mile am walk with Pippin, 4 miles treadmill, 20 minutes yoga/toning focus: upper body