What’s In Your Gym Bag
| August 24, 2012 | Posted by Carrie under Fitness Friday, Running |
Today’s Blogger Challenge Topic is to share What’s In Your Gym Bag. I don’t really have a gym bag, but I do have a bag in my laundry room that holds all of my workout gear. If I am heading out to the gym or for a run, everything is right there. There are times that I take the whole bag along, but I usually just grab an item or two and go.
It hangs on the hooks with backpacks, a dance bag and sweatshirts.
Near the bag is a pile of clean towels – right above the laundry machine so that I can wash, fold, store, grab and go very easily.
In my bag: my RoadID, Garmin (unless it’s by the computer charging), Spibelt, gym membership tag on a ring with a padlock key, padlock for the gym lockers, gloves (obviously I don’t pull out anything non-seasonal), a headlamp (that I’ve never used – free from the RnR Vegas race), headphones.
What’s in your bag? Do you keep a good supply of fresh gym towels handy?
In other news, I was very proud of myself yesterday – - I got up early as usual and actually went out for an early morning run. Instead of puttering around on the computer, I moved my butt.
Not only that, but I decided to run some hills. I needed to mix up my usual mid-week 3 mile route and I wasn’t in the mood for a speed workout. So, I knew there was a hill and I decided to make that my workout.
Here’s my question – I did the hill 3 times. I took a 20 second or so breather at the top each time before heading back down and no break before going back up. The third time up was very challenging. For those of you that do hill workouts – how many times do you do hills? I guess it doesn’t really matter, it felt like a good workout to me. I’m thinking the way to see improvement is to tack on a 4th repeat next time? And, what length of hill should I look for? To do 3 repeats, I went a little shy of a mile… what do you think?
Once again, the hills themselves don’t look quite so brutal when looking at my Garmin graph. But, they were hard for me.
Someday I’ll master the self-portrait.
Head over to Jill’s blog hop today for more health and fitness motivation, it’s Fitness Friday.
Great job on the hills, Carrie! I couldn’t avoid them on my runs in PA and it felt good to challenge my quads again.
I have to really look for them here, and have only done hill repeats a handful of times. I think any number of repeats is fine, as long as you do it until you’re feel fatigued. Somewhere between 4-8 is common. Doesn’t it feel good to run first thing?
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Yes it did feel great to get it done first thing. Glad you got to challenge yourself while you were on vacation.
Nice job on the hills. One way to look at hill work is to do it by time. Warm up, then do 4-6 hill repeats (2 minutes running, 1:30 minute recovery downhill.) Ideally you can get back to the start in the 1:30 and repeat running the same hill.
You don’t have to do it until you are fatigued as mentioned above. Essentially with recovery, you are taking away the fatigue component and giving your body a chance to recover. Just make sure the hill is not too steep nor too easy.
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Thank you so much for the advice. Really helpful.
I don’t use a gym bag. MY gym is 5 minutes from my house and I usually just bring a towel and my water bottle. Great job on the hills!! They make such a difference in endurance.
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My gym is pretty close too – I do usually just grab what I need from the bag and not the whole thing.
My gym bag: extra tech shirt/shorts, plastic bags for wet clothes, garmin, road id, Nuun tablets, Vega gels, headlamp, BodyGlide, stopwatch, Ipod and a few spare gym towels.
On hill repeats I usually do a routine that is specific for the race I have coming up. You can mix up the workout by doing short, steep hills one week and switch to longer, more gradual inclines the next time. 3-4 reps is good, unless you are training for a really hilly race, then I would do 4-6.
Remember to shorten your stride slightly on the hills and concentrate on picking your feet up! Pump your arms up and down to generate momentum, but don’t take your arms across your body. Lean forward from the ankles, not the hips, relax the upper body and don’t let your shoulders creep up to your ears. Keep those facial muscles relaxed too! Don’t tense up the jaw, that will tighten the whole upper body up.
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Thank you for the hill advice. I find that I need to remind myself to relax frequently during challenging runs. Makes such a huge difference.
I don’t have a gym bag since I don’t go to a gym, but I keep my Garmin and iPod on the kitchen counter near my purse. Still, I forgot my Garmin today! As for hills, I mostly do hill intervals on the treadmill, or just run a route with rolling hills. We have several killer hills in my neighborhood that I could try repeats on …..
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I hate that when I leave something in a convenient place and then still forget it. Ugh.
I think 4-6 is normal. They say anywhere from .25 to .5 up and then slowly back down. Personally I just pick a hilly trail run and run that; that way I don’t have to “think” so much about the hills!
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That’s kind of what I was thinking – I’m so bad at thinking mid-run, I just found a hilly spot and ran up and down.