So, How are Those Goals Coming?

Back in March, I wrote a two-part post about my goals for the summer pre-season and the upcoming 2013-14 ice season. Since the oval opens for ice next weekend in an hour (life got busy and this post took a backseat for a week!), I think it's time to review my progress on the pre-season and "process" (as opposed to "progress") goals--the ways I wanted to improve how I trained, rather than the goals for the outcome of my training (that, of course, will be another post, at the end of the ice season).  To save you from skipping back to last March's post, here are my "process" goals.

• Execute a good dryland season before the oval opens again May 6 (for inlining)

• Be consistent with warm up and cool down routines

• Do core work and yoga at least twice a week

• Follow the workout plan once the ice season opens

And now (drumroll), let's look at how I've done on the first three:

• Execute a good dryland season before the oval opens again May 6 (for inlining) 

I'm happy to say that I did this.  Mel, Sprinter Boy, Inliner Boy, and a couple others started a group dryland thing, and this enabled me to get all the way to the inlining season without giving up on dryland.

• Be consistent with warm up and cool down routines

I'm getting better at this.  Warmup is still sketchy; I've got some things I want to incorporate into my ice season warmup, since our ice time is limited and it would be good to do off-ice warmup first.  In the inline season I pretty much just skated to warm up, which is fine since I have all the on-skates time I need in the summer to warm up.  I have to say I'm rockin' the cooldown, though--or at least, the stretch/mobility part.  Thanks to CrossFit (which is where I met the PT who introduced me to foam rolling and a good hamstring stretch), I now have a nice routine for mobility and rolling, and I do it at least after every workout and sometimes more often.  This has led to my chronic hamstring pain almost disappearing, and my creaky legs feeling a lot less creaky.  Yay!

• Do core work and yoga at least twice a week

Again, thanks to CrossFit I'm doing great with this one. It's not yoga, but it does involve mobility.  It involves core work, and it also gets me doing some upper body work with weights, which is highly recommended for (ahem) women my age.  I've been doing it twice a week, which will be a bit more difficult now that I'll be skating four times a week, but I'm committed to doing it and (this is the big thing) I love it!  Finally, a core/mobility/upper body workout that I love!

• Follow the workout plan once the ice season opens

Well, I get to take my first crack at this one in about an hour!  I have the November workouts all written, and I'm ready to go.  I really feel hopeful that this season I'll be able to execute the workouts properly and that I'll see the benefits from that in some new PB's.  Time will tell.

And now...it's time to skate!