Neglected Blog

I haven't touched my blog in a LONG time.  There are a lot of reasons.  One of the main reasons over the past several months has been lack of time.  A good part of this was because I decided last April that I was going to do Tough Mudder in September.  When I decided that, I decided I was going to need to train hard.  I started working out 5-6 times a week about a year ago, trying to focus a bit on strength since I'm fairly active cardio-wise anyway.  When I decided to do Tough Mudder I upped the strength training a level and started running again (for the first time in more than a decade).  Turns out that I really like running and it came back to me quite easily (I think it was because with the strength training I'd been doing and that I had decent cardio levels to start with it was just about training the running muscles).  I was working out 40-60 minutes a day, alternating running and strength training/bootcamp style workouts, 6 days a week.  I liked doing it could feel/see myself getting stronger but it did take up a huge chunk of time (40-60 minutes didn't include making food to eat after--usually smoothies or homemade energy bars-- and showering). The payoff was that I had a great time doing Tough Mudder with my team and actually found the event easier than I thought it would be (and wasn't too sore in the days after).

 my team just before we crossed the finish line

It's been great the past couple weeks to be off work (we didn't run a holiday program since we were having more renovations done on the building) and not have to do ANYTHING.  I still went for a few runs (including a 10km run yesterday) and did a couple Jillian Michaels workouts (I really like the 3minutes strength, 2 minutes cardio, 1 minute abs circuits).  I'm still deciding what event I'd like to try next (the other day a friend tried to encourage me to do a triathlon with her.  That's something I've never even considered-- I don't really know how to do proper swim strokes for the most part but maybe it would be fun....).  I'd like to join the Run for Refugees team at the Melbourne Marathon next year and do the half marathon distance (so far, the furthest I've run is a 15km run and it went really well). 
I think my next post will be about some things I've found useful during training.  I've changed what I eat a bit.  Turns out I also have a weird fueling technique for before a big run but it works for me.  I also made some really good homemade energy bars that I like to keep on hand.  I'll also post some info about how I trained.