Bitter Cold, Bad Air and a Strong Butt

In spite of the gorgeous sunshine outside the window, I knew it wasn't really a good idea to run outdoors today - along with the bitter cold temperatures the air quality is very bad right now - lots of that fine dust I mentioned a while back.  So I decided to take my run to the gym and do it on the treadmill.

I warmed up 5 minutes on the bike before doing two leg strengthening exercises I have been trying in order to strengthen and engage my glutes before my runs: Bridge Marches (on your back with your hips lifted up in bridge position, alternating lifting one leg up at a time as in "marching" while keeping your butt lifted) and Single-Leg Reach (kind of like a one leg deadlift where you reach down to the floor with the opposite arm as you bend over).  I got these exercises, by Rachel Cosgrove, from the November/December 2011 issue of "Women's Running Magazine" (which my sister sent me - thank you, Jenny!).  The idea is that our sitting culture causes tight hip flexors and "gluteal amnesia"where the brain forgets to switch on the glutes, causing us to rely instead on our quadriceps muscles to do all the work when running.  This made a lot of sense to me, so I decided to give her program a try to see if it improves my leg strength and helps some of the hip issues I have been having. 

I couldn't find the article on the Women's Running website, so I scanned the page for you so you know what I am describing; there are also several other leg exercises in this program, but they recommend specifically to do these two before a run, and that is what I am doing for the time being.

My hips and legs are my weak spot and I have to be careful what I do and not to do too much at once or I get pain and problems... Today was my third time with these two exercises and so far, so good!

So after doing the two exercises, which really don't take more than five minutes, I got on my favorite treadmill and got going on my run.  It felt good and I did 42 minutes at an easy pace. 

It's a quiet afternoon here now - my oldest just left for three hours of judo (he helps teach the first two hours with the younger kids) and the two youngest are on a school trip to the Netherlands to do indoor skiing, so they won't be home til late...  Honestly, it is very tempting on such a cold day, feeling comfortably tired from my run, to sneak upstairs to the warm and sunny back bedroom and take a little nap!  Just might have to consider that...but first I need to put my warm clothes on and walk to the bakery for bread and the local Turkish market for bananas - the one inconvenience (for me personally) from Monday's strike was that my grocery store had no bananas when I went yesterday.