Posts tagged with fitness

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August 24, 2008

How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!) Part III

If you’ve been keeping up with this series, you know two things:
why you should run (get better in bed!), and how to plan your run (get you a goal!).

THE THIRD (AND FINAL) THING I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT RUNNING IS, it’s so much better when you’re doing it to Kanye.
…

That’s what she said!

Make a kick-ass mix.
Best part of running? Looking better? Nope. Feeling Better? Nope. Making a fitness mix for your pretty little mp3 player? Oooh yeah.

The only rule of fitness mix is: there is no rule. Whether you’re into hip hop, death metal, disco, or all three, if it gets your blood pumping and your feet moving, it goes in the mix.

I have a couple mixes on my iPod. The 27-song master playlist is great to shuffle through when I’m feeling random; with the master mix I never know what will play next—could be Technotronic telling me to pump up the jam, Jay-Z saying I should brush the dirt off my shoulder, or Black Eyed Peas singing about my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.

Sometimes—when I want to run for minutes and not distance—I put a towel over the treadmill computer and turn on my 30-minute mix, which looks something like this:

Let’s Get It Started—Black Eyed Peas
The New Workout Plan–Kanye West
Glass Danse–The Faint
Stronger–Kanye West
Firestarter–Prodigy
Volcano Girls–Veruca Salt
Hips Don’t Lie–Shakira
Welcome To The Black Parade–My Chemical Romance (for the cool down)

Want to give it a listen? Click on my mixtape!

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Need some inspiration to create your playlist? Hänni recommends you:

• Rock out like an Olympian with the US Summer Olympics Athletes Playlist
• Check out this huge and awesome list of workout songs from peertainer.com
• Skim through the official workout playlists thread at bodybuilding.com
• Get stoked on the Art of Manliness 52 songs to help you get bigger, stronger, and faster
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Hey hannihaus readers, what are your favorite tunes to rock your run to? Leave them in comments.

And with that, our How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!) series concludes. I hope you are inspired to dust off your sneaks or kick up your routine. With a little motivation, a plan, and a good mix, you’ll be harder, better, faster, stronger in no time.

May your next run be your best run,

xoxoh

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August 17, 2008

How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!) Part II

In a previous post I told you why running rocks, gave you some good reasons to get that badonkadonk busy running laps.

THE SECOND THING I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT RUNNING IS, it’s best to be a boy scout; be prepared.

Set a goal.
A goal-whether to walk the neighborhood or train for a 10K-will give you something to work toward. Long-term goals are great, but it’s a focus on the short-term that will get you where you want to be. In October I plan to run my first 5K and I want to finish in less than 30 minutes. To achieve this long-term goal I have been working on a series of short-term challenges; every four weeks I re-evaluate my progress and decide whether, in the next four weeks, I need to bump up my speed on the treadmill, add in an extra day of running, or incorporate inclines or sprinting into my routine. It’s these small victories that keep me going.

I’m currently working on increasing my speed, so my goal for these four weeks is to run two miles non-stop at a high speed, two to three times / week.

Examples of short-term goals to get *you* started include:

  • Walking around your neighborhood x # of minutes, x days / week
  • Walking on an incline at the gym x # of minutes (or miles), x days / week
  • Jogging for x # of minutes (or miles), x days / week

The caveat to all this planning is: it’s ok to improvise!
If you find your routine, even in the short-term, is getting stale, go ahead and free-ball it. Let’s face it: working out sucks. If you’re going to sweat your ass off it’d better be less than lame, right?

My favorite way to mix things up is to add intervals. Intervals are short-term, high-intensity exercises (for example sprints) I sandwich into my regular runs. By increasing my intensity in short bursts I fend off boredom, and guess what? I also get a better workout-running intervals burns fat faster than running at a steady pace. My boyfriend, a personal trainer who lost 100 pounds through diet and exercise, likes to jog five minutes and sprint two.

A twist on the intervals described above, my friend the marathoner uses run/walk intervals as a way to mentally break up mileage and recuperate sore muscles during long-distance runs. On marathon days she runs nine minutes, walks one the entire 26 miles. For more info on walk breaks, check this out.

Other ways to improvise during your run include:

  • Incorporating an incline, either periodically or for the workout duration
  • Sprinting your last few minutes to the finish

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OK so I’ve hooked you up with some solid info, but if you still don’t know where to start with goal setting, check out these time-tested programs:

Couch-To-5K Running Program | Punk Rock Running Program

Got other suggestions? Leave them in comments.

And check back at the haus for our next (and final) installment where I mux it up. Yes we’re going to talk about the workout mp3 mixtape. Wanna know what I run to? I’ll give you a listen next week.

12 comments

August 10, 2008

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: How To Run Your Ass Off (Literally!)

That that don’t kill me can only make me stronger—Kanye West, Stronger

Want to drop weight fast? Marry a man who—after moving you to a strange city where you have no support system–leaves you for his mistress. Worked for me.

In discovering my husband’s humiliating infidelity, I also stumbled upon something else: the post-traumatic stress diet. Of course when I say “diet” this implies a conscientious change in eating. In actuality, mired in a grief so heavy it overrode my physical needs, eating was not an issue … I simply didn’t do it.

Within months I’d dropped more than 10% of my body weight, which frankly I didn’t have to lose. And so it was a relief when—as I started my emotional recovery—my physical self got better too.

The weight I put on was happy weight, but it was also flabby weight. My stomach made muffins over the tops of the designer denim I’d bought when I was smaller, sad. In my newfound wellness, I started biking, then added weights to the mix. Most recently I’ve been running.

I have a friend who runs marathons. She told me I should write this post—let people know I’m not who I was. Thanks to my post-divorce fitness routine my body is harder, better, faster, stronger. She recommended I share my tips for running. I think that’s a great idea. This is the first post in a series. Enjoy.

THE FIRST THING I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT RUNNING IS, it rocks!

If you’re looking for a reason to run here’s a few:

  • It’s free—yes dear hannihaus readers, running is recession proof. Unless you’re training for a marathon you don’t need any fancy gear; a pair of feet, a place to run, and some well-fitting sneaks will do you just fine.
  • It makes you happy—my chemical romance is not just a kick-ass band of boys who wear makeup (squee!) it’s also a state of mind; when you run your body produces happy chemicals called endorphins that make you feel euphoric. A runner’s high is totally addictive and it’s not the kind of thing that will get you sent to rehab.
  • It makes all your fantasies come true (or at least the revenge ones)—pissed at your boyfriend? Stomp on his head. Mad at your mother-in-law? Give her the shoe. When I’m feeling particularly stressed/angsty nothing gets me back to good like a nice cathartic tromp on the treadmill.
  • It makes you sexy—in addition to losing inches on your legs, running also tightens up your glutes, quads, and calves. And as a bonus, because you’re using your core, your abs will get firmer too. Oh and your lungs and heart will also be strengthened, but of course when your sassy runner’s milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, your lungs will be the least of their interest.

Oh and running also helps you to sleep better, think better, and sex better. How’s that for incentive?

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Got more ideas for why running rocks? Leave them in comments. And stay tuned for the next installment where I recommend free-balling your running routine while keeping your gym shorts firmly affixed.

11 comments

March 31, 2008

Divorce and the Dénouement Or How I Became A Biker Chick

So I won’t mince words. It happened to me and it’s happened to many of you. I’m only mentioning this because avid readers of the haus will notice I’ll not write about him anymore—it turns out Angelface wasn’t really such an angel after all.

Shortly after I wrote this, Angel left me for a woman who—for 6 months prior—had opened her legs to him.

The affair destroyed me. In the face of heartbreak, I stopped writing and started starving myself of both sleep and sustenance so that I became, in every way, a mere fraction of who I’d been.

And then, when I had cried all I could, when my chest had heaved and convulsed it’s last for a man who didn’t deserve it—the labor of moving blood through my broken-but-still-beating heart having lessened—I started over.

I decided to find myself a new love.

And I found that love in a shiny pink bike.

Her name is Miss Piggy. She’s a Marin Portofino road bike. And baby, she’s the best.

Last October I purchased Piggy from a very handsome salesman (who is now my very handsome boyfriend!), and I have been riding ever since. It’s 6 months in and I’ve logged 700 miles of butt time on my bike.

Accordingly I’ve logged 700 miles worth of RECOVERY time from my riding bike for my butt. In cycling the actual physical aspect of peddling and perspiring is only about 50% of the sport. The other 50% is the constant exercise in protecting your tender vittles.

Hello, my name is Hänni and I’m a bike-aholic. I am not ashamed to admit it: I put butter in my shorts…

And I like it.

chamois butter

So you may be wondering, why the hell am I riding so much? The short answer is, I’m insane. The long answer is, I’m training for the BP MS 150, a 170+ mile bike from Houston to Austin on April 12-13. This ride benefits the National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society Lone Star Chapter which serves more than 17,000 Texans affected by MS, an unpredictable, disabling disease of the central nervous system.

In the time leading up the ride, I’ll be blogging here about my training experiences. As we take this trip down memory lane together, I hope you enjoy the tales of triumph, tribulation, and unabashed use of padded shorts and crotch cream.

Piggy1
Til next,

xoxoh