And the fun begins!!

Yesterday was an awesome day for training!  The weather was great, I was well rested and had the attitude to go along with it!
I started the day with my traditional Baptiste Power Yoga!  It is both a mental training session as well as an awesome hour of stretching and opening up my muscles and body for recovery.  I honestly think that I would have likely injured myself along the training journey without this practice.   It is one hour of total awesome training to start the day.  If time allowed I would likely more often as I truly see the benefits of the practice as part of my training.
Part 2 of the training was turning up the intensity on my running training a bit.  I have been doing the intervals and speed work as laid out in my program.  However, it is void of any hills.  When I have been running and had hills, they have gotten the best of me.  So, I have decided to add hill training to my sessions as I know the overall benefits are huge.  So, in the greatest day of this summer to date, I got my running shoes on and my HR monitor in hand to go out for a great session.  For my first hill session I did 4 repeats of an awesome hill area.  Each repeat is likely is more than 500m on a fairly steep incline.  It was an awesome session, my HR goes anaerobic and it stays.  Mu recovery is great, within 1-2 minutes from the top I am back into Zone1-2 and ready to tackle another.   It was a great session, when I got to the 4th repeat I was still able to push the hill at a sub 4:45 pace and not collapse at the top.  Overall I am 100% pleased with the hill training as I know that it is a great way to kick up my cardio and my overall run performance.  I am looking forward to having this as part of my training for the next few weeks, I know it will contribute to an overall improvement!

Today was another fun day on the training session.  As I talked about earlier, yoga is a big part of my training.  The yoga that I practice is Baron Baptiste Power Yoga, it has a very loyal and strong following throughout North America.  It has taken the traditional yoga and transformed it into an energetic and challenging practice that appeals to our generation of both yogies and athletes.  This morning I was invited to a session that was being taught by Baron Baptiste, it was an awesome experience.   THe session was attended by 75 people and every person in the room was 100% spent by the end of the session.  I likely sweated out about 10lbs in the course of twisting, holding and shaking through a great 90 minute practice.  I was grateful to have been invited as one of the few to experience this session. Baron no longer does studio teaching as he spends his time leading training camps and leading new instructors into the practice, so being there was great.  The photo shows the room as people were arriving. Imagine a 25' x 25' room with 75 people.  Each time you did a pose it was a body contact session with others around you.  If you have a Baptiste Yoga studio near your home, try it, give it a chance you will see a great opportunity to add it to your training.
I did also attempt an open water swim today, but 48F, NO WAY!  I froze my ankles helping the spotter put the boat in the water.  Try gain tomorrow.
To all the American blog world, have a wicked Independence Weekend!  Enjoy your friends, family and training.