HIIT Happens

So yesterday was an interesting day. I've had my niece over since she's back from her trip to visit her dad. There was less than 2 weeks left of summer vacation, so my sister didn't bother to put her in camp. I can NOT believe that school starts on the 4th. This summer went too fast and I don't feel like we have much to show for it. Anyway, I also had the two little ones I babysit, and we desperately needed to go grocery shopping. I usually leave my kids home and I would've left my niece with them, but they all wanted to come! That's right, I had a 16 yr. old, 14 yr. old, 11 yr. old, 7 yr. old and 5 yr. old with me in the grocery store, for almost TWO HOURS. They were actually really good except for the volume level. Some kids just don't have INSIDE voices!!

After everyone went home, I got dinner done for the kids (Charlie works late Tuesdays and Thursdays) and then went to the gym while little Charlie was at karate. He can't do much with a broken hand, but Sensei had him doing one-handed modified push-ups and crunches when everyone else was doing things he wasn't capable of. Poor thing's stomach is killing him. I wanted to try out a new HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout I found on Pinterest for the treadmill. It starts out slow and then...

Holy sh*t!!! All I have to say is that the FIRST 8.0 was just WAY too fast. I knocked it down to 7.5, and I managed all of those intervals, modified to 7.5. Then, when I got to the 8.5 intervals, I managed to do them at 8.0, because it was only 30 seconds. When the 20 second intervals rolled around I managed to eek out 1 interval at 8.2 and then I was D.O.N.E.! I just couldn't hack it. I finished up and ran 3.16 miles in 30 minutes. That was an extremely tough workout! I was sweating buckets and after I was resuscitated, I felt great! Next time, I'll kick the 7 minutes at 5.5 up to 6.0 and then continue on with the modifications I made last night. It's not following the workout to a 'T,' but it's definitely going to help my speed! I've slowed way down since working on distance and I don't like it.