As promised–video review and update…

“Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favour.”
Brian Tracy

First a review of the aerobic step I received from CSN Stores. I was very excited when I came home on Tuesday and saw this big package on my doorstep. Not only did they send me my order quickly, they didn’t charge me any shipping fees.

When I spoke of buying the step, a few of you gave me ideas of how you use yours. I loved that…thanks! Therefore, I shall now show my favourite way to use the step and stay in shape for running.

The jumps…

Of course, there are tons of other ways to use this super solid step. Thanks again to CSN for this great opportunity. BTW, the gravelly Lauren Bacall voice is a side-effect of taking so many asthma inhalers…the corticosteroid powder is messing with my vocal cords. Oh and the little dog you see, that's Flocon (Snowflake in English) he's my mom's and I'm keeping him for six months while she's keeping herself warm in Florida this winter.

UPDATE: The piriformis seems to be under control. Iron Mike was right on when he said it seemed to be early onset. If I’m careful, and follow everyone’s advice, I should be okay. My PT was on vacation this week, so I didn’t see him, but I may not need to right away after all. Marcia suggested I do sidesteps with a stretchy rope; Mom Running from Cancer suggests I stretch and use the foam roller; and both Anne and ajh suggested I roll with the tennis ball. I’ve been good about stretching and rolling, the tennis ball really makes a huge difference and the pain is much much diminished. Yay!
 
As for the prednisone, I’m still on it and must take it for another 8 days. However, by next week, things should be back to “normal”. No use dwelling on it too much, at least I know I’ll feel better soon.

One of the things I decided to do is try and work on my speed a little bit. I don’t like to suffer and realized that I may have been holding back, especially on my shorter tempo runs. No need to warn me about overdoing it, I'm doing this with care and caution. So on Tuesday, I had a 4K tempo run to complete and figured I’d try and push it a little more, without looking at my watch, and see if it made a difference. Indeed, I ran at a pace of 9:31m/mile, the fastest I’ve ever run. I was pretty excited. I then repeated the exact same pace on Thursday for another 4K. There is not much that beats that feeling of pride. Although I will not be blogging much, know that if you are interested, I am on Daily Mile and I always enter my runs.

Another cool thing is that my 16 year-old niece has signed up to do the Hypothermic Half with us. So, I'll be doing a few of my long runs with her. I'm really excited and love to tease her about crossing over to the "other side" ;)

Finally, I may have another short post coming up next weekend as I will be a volunteer elf for the Santa Shuffle over here on Mount Royal. Lots of family and friends will be running and it’ll be fun to Pay it Forward this time around. I’m pretty excited about volunteering.

That's it for today, I'm off to complete my workout for today, after a warmup on the bike trainer. Happy belated Thanksgiving to my friends from the U.S.A. and happy running to all.

Cheers!