Planes, Trains, and Running Shoes

1. Marathon Training - Oh man it feels good to write that on the blog! That's right! This week marks Week 1 of training for the Madrid Marathon! I could not be more excited to be traveling back to Spain to run a marathon! Carbo loading with wine, tapas, paella and my Texan sister from another mister? Count.Me.In. As of now, I've decided to stick with running 5x a week so this week calls for 3 easy runs of 4 miles, 1 hill workout and a long run of 9 miles. I'm trying to be serious about strength and cross training this week so I've done a Jillian Michaels' DVD, a  spin class (see below) and an upper body strength training session. Not too shabby! I'm undecided as to whether I'm going to go back to my routine of 'Training Tuesday' posts. They were really beneficial for me to process how my training was going and to get advice from the other marathoners out there (especially Celia) but I haven't decided yet. We'll see. Either way, I will keep you posted about how my training for Madrid is going because I can't freaking wait to tackle Marathon #3 and my big sub-4 goal in SPAIN!

2. Spinning - Last night, Emily and I took a trip over to Soul Cycle to try out a spin class. I had never taken any kind of indoor cycling class before and decided to go to "the best" for my first experience with spinning. Soul Cycle has gotten some serious hype from magazines, celebrities, TV shows, etc. so I thought it would be a great place to take my first class. My overall take - I didn't really like it. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing...and the fact that the lights were off almost the whole class, meant I couldn't look at other people to try and figure it out...and the music was awful. I'm talking late 90s/early 00's rap mixed in with the latest house music. I wasn't feeling it...at all...and you know what? I didn't feel like it was that great of a workout. I just sweated a lot and I'm sore in a region that I really would prefer to not be sore in from sitting on the bike. During the weights portion (yes, you do reps with light weights and crazy things like sit-ups and push-ups on the bike), I just kept sliding off my seat and I felt like every time I stood up in the bike, I was going to fly out of my clip-in shoes because my knees would buckle in some really awkward way. Long story short - spinning is not for me. I would consider trying it again if I had a more newbie-friendly instructor and better music but at $32 per class? I won't be back to Soul Cycle?

3. The Book and Movie Lists - If you've taken a close look at my blog lately, you'll notice that I changed my goal from reading 100 books and watching 100 movies before my 25th to 50 of each. Why? Well, for starters, my birthday is in 6 weeks so I know that's just not going to happen and even though I've kind of given myself the extension of doing all of some of these things at 25, I've nixed the Book and Movie lists because well, I haven't liked the majority of the movies I've watched...with the exception of The Prestige...that movie was phenomenal...and the reason I haven't actually sat down to watch a lot of them is because they just don't seem like interesting movies to me. The same goes for The Book List. I've loved some of the books I've read on this list...Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Gone with the Wind? But others? Have just been terrible and I really love to read so I want to go back to reading books that I want to  read. I'll definitely continue reading some of those books beyond the 50 but I'm not aiming to read all of them anymore.

That's all I've got for you today. Tell me: How has your week been? Have you ever been to a spin class? Did you like it? Have you tried Soul Cycle? Do you like reading? What are you reading these days?