Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I've come to realize I truly love working out. I also am finding the whole calories in/calories out equation fascinating. My mission now is to pay close attention to what I eat while ramping up the intensity of my workouts in hopes that my sprint tri performance improves this year. And really, my performance should only improve. I've only completed one sprint tri to date, and if I do worse the next go 'round, that'll be quite disappointing to say the least. One other mission I have is to get my one-pack abs looking just a tad more like a two-pack. I keep thinking back to last summer and the chat I had with an expert in sports fitness. When I was lamenting over my slow running, how I'd been trying to become faster but not really seeing any improvement, he told me a solid core is the key to increasing speed, to bettering my performance overall. To see if this is true, I've added core work every other day: planks, Russian twists, bicycles, machine crunches, machi...

Well, the Bike the US for MS isn't going to happen. Hubby just isn't on board for it, and I can't go ahead with something that he isn't in favor of. I could be petty and snarky and say he does things I'm not on board with, but I won't. Maybe when all the kids are grown and gone, he and I both can do this ride. The upside is not having a two-month ride on the calendar means the summer is wide open for whatever I can dream up. And I like to dream big. First dream: seeking a PR at the Sullivan Sprint Tri. This was my first sprint tri ever, where I got behind some s l o w swimmers and couldn't get around them. The plan is I'm going to start swimming in January and really work on my form and speed. Most of my problem at the tri was my own fault, not having an accurate 400 meter swim time. If I had timed myself prior to the tri, I would have been put into a faster slot, thus avoiding being roadblocked by slower swimmers. Second dream: an event every week...

Last week I was out of town, attending a conference. While there I ran each day, plugging away, determined to get faster. I also learned something key to improving: all movement comes from the core, and in order to get faster, the core has to be strong. Weak core, weak performance. I've thought about this a lot and decided I'm going to go to work on my core. I've been doing some exercises specifically for core, but after talking with an individual who works with athletes about this issue, I learned I was going about it wrong. I was concentrating on crunches. I was told to scratch these in favor of doing other exercises that work from the inside out. These include breathing exercises while lying on my back, that isolate muscles. They include using a weighted ball and twisting while balancing with my legs raised. I've seen these done by others, but I've never been able to keep my legs raised while twisting. Tonight, though, I found I actually can. I was stunned. Someh...