If I don’t have a plan, I won’t do what I’m supposed to — and having a plan means so much more than just adding all of my runs to my calendar and signing up for a class on MindBody (and, honestly, this applies the same for my personal life). WHY AM I DOING ANY OF THIS?!

What it means: Drafting a WHOLE workout to include the different warm-up exercises that I’ll be doing and for how long, what the focus of my run is (instead of just going out to accomplish a certain number of miles for the day), and planning out my cool-down and stretching routine.

An interesting thing happened: This process has made me much more attached to my workout and makes me feel TRULY accountable for my routine rather than showing up at the gym and not knowing what to do or plugging in my earbuds and tuning out on a slogging long run. It was a total mind-shift on my health and fitness. It may sound like a “no duh!” thing, but I’ve been exercising without purpose or focus for a while — it was really important to give more meaning to my healthy lifestyle and be more mindful of my decisions to do something and how I budget my time.

One of my goals for 2016 was to run a 2-hour half marathon, which I’ve decided to make happen this October at the IMT Des Moines half. To accomplish this, I will need discipline, speed and power, and a little help from my running community. My training officially starts in late July, so for now I’m focusing on my running base (mostly with consistency), my core, and overall body strength.

And also, just as REST has always been integral to my mental health and prevention of burnout, and given my awful Dam to Dam race last weekend, I took a week off to rest my body and mind. It was important to reflect on what went wrong and WHY. Well, Why #1 is that my training program was practically non-existent. There wasn’t one single week where I ran more than twice, and several weeks where I didn’t run (or workout) at all. Though I was a little surprised on how dehydrated I was on race day, especially with how conscious I am over my water intake and that I didn’t even have a drink the night before!

I sincerely want to follow through on a training program and be all “EFF YEAH, MEL!” Making the practice as important as the completion of the goal is my new purpose.

Anyway… SUNDAY I got my shit together and put together a great workout — and finally used my in-home TRX suspension trainer (and today I remember why I LOVE IT so much, woof!).

Warm-up: Jump rope for 3 minutes
Upper body strength: TRX arms and shoulders video workout, about a 20-minute workout
Cardio: A 15-min interval workout on the treadmill (a little over a mile in total)
Burpees (‘cuz burpees, baby!): 39 total, though I maxed out at 18 straight without stopping
Running strength/power: Strong & Fast Workout 1 from Runners World; 5 movements at 15 reps each/each side (took me around 15 minutes to complete)
Cool Down: Then some light yoga stretching to cool down

It felt like the perfect workout. And it felt REALLY good to plan it out and make it happen.

Goals for this week:

• Run three times — including going to check out a new run club. No mileage requirements; do one interval/speed workout.
• Do my regular Wednesday session of yoga.
• Two sessions of TRX (I’ll likely do a similar workout to Sunday’s).
• BURPEES with every workout! (I wonder if I can do them every day? HA!)
• Get through our BIG bike ride on Saturday! (EEEK!)