Negative Splits!!

This is a (long-ish) story of VICTORY!

On Tuesday night, I arrived at rehearsal and the stage manager pulled me aside. She told me that the girl that was playing one of the featured roles broke her toe the day before and had to drop out of the show. She's okay, but was told by her podiatrist that she couldn't dance. Then, the stage manager asked if I would be comfortable taking over as her replacement! Now, this is both awesome and kind of daunting news. First of all, this is the role I wanted when I auditioned for the production. Win! But, we only had 11 rehearsals left. Yikes. I accepted the offer, and quickly scheduled some more voice lessons so I could go over my song and devoted the rest of my time to learning my lines.

On Thursday, my day was becoming jam packed with stuff. I had a voice lesson in the afternoon, my sister was visiting a venue for the wedding that I had to be "present" (via Skype) for, and I had another 3 hour rehearsal. For some reason, I wasn't finding the energy to do my NTC workout before my voice lesson. It also took me forever to get home because of traffic, and I didn't get the workout in before my rehearsal.

Rehearsal was rough - lots of jumping, kicking, and spinning in heels. I was exhausted by the end of it and was thinking that this would be another Thursday where I would skip my NTC workout, since it was 11pm by the time I got home.

HOWEVER, JW also hadn't completed his Insanity workout of the day, so we motivated each other to go downstairs to our apartment gym and complete our individual 45 minute workouts together. I must say it was really nice to just have someone physically there, keeping me accountable. Bonus points for it being my fiancé! :)

Warm-up

Completed with 8-10lbs dumbbells

 The bulk of the workout were squat and plank exercises, and many of them were 2 minutes. This made the workout seem a bit faster since I wasn't doing so many moves. I always say I don't like when there isn't a discernible pattern, but this time it didn't bother me so much.

Ab Section

Cool-Down

 I ended the workout at midnight. Before I went to sleep, I tried to plan out my weekend. It's a holiday weekend (yay Labor Day!) and I didn't necessarily want a bunch of workouts looming ahead of me, so I decided that even though I ended my workout at midnight, I still wanted to run 5 miles in the morning. If I didn't, then I wouldn't be as rested for the 14 miles on Saturday, which is the longest distance I've ever run. I had to run on Friday morning if I wanted everything to stay on track.

I set my alarm for 6:30am, and somehow didn't get out of bed until 8am. I hate it when that happens! In any case, I got outside by about 8:15am. I had one of these for my fuel:

Yum!

I put on my new Mizunos and went outside down the normal way. I wasn't really feeling great - pretty tired, and my feet were getting used to the new shoes. They felt great, just different. Throughout the run, I kept wondering if I was going faster or not, but ultimately decided to stop worrying about it and just run.

I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID NEGATIVE SPLITS! Look at those green numbers! I cannot tell you how happy seeing that made me feel! And it just goes to show that even when all the elements are different and out of my control - that my workout the previous night was much later than I anticipated, that I ran on tired dancing legs, that my new shoes were being broken into, that I kept running into stop lights and wet pavement - I can still be successful, no matter what!

I feel AWESOME. I felt so awesome that I went home and completed about 10 different errands that I was meaning to complete all week. Now I feel so accomplished! And all before noon! I'm so ready to get the 14 miles out of the way tomorrow (I'm SO nervous!!) and then enjoy my holiday weekend!

Any plans for Labor Day?