Great weekend highlight!

SO I am officially alright with accepting that fall is here. I wasn't--this past week I still wanted to wear my sandals and cami's like it was July. But, a little trip to the Swede Hollow Cafe in St. Paul allowed me to accept the season. Every year I love to go and welcome fall with their tomato soup! Saturday after the Health Expo, my buddy Jason and I stopped in and they were closed, but the owner Wes, invited us in and served us anyway, he said he liked having people to talk to while he worked on closing up.

I got the soup along with an asparagus and mushroom frittata!!

Also, since the cafe was officially closed and closed the next day, Wes gave us caramel rolls on the house!

All of the food at the Swede Hollow is made from scratch and it was amazing. I indulged in the whole roll. Hey, I have a long run tomorrow!! I will have to make it back sooner than next fall, that is for sure. Thanks Wes!

Aside from having a three day weekend, amazing soup, thrifting, watching the Twin Cities Marathon, going to the Target Health and Fitness Expo (MUCH more to come on this) where I got free swag and talked up Fit this girl, a HIGHLIGHT of the weekend was getting to see and meet Hal Higdon!!

Hal spoke at the Expo where he talked about his own racing and answered questions from runners who were competing in the Marathon this morning. I got the chance to say hi and let him know how much I have enjoyed using his half-marathon training so far for my Halloween run. It was so cool, he is SUPER NICE! I will cover all of the great things I saw and got at the expo this week and next!!

St. Paul really came through this weekend- good show pigseye!

Do you use Hal's training program or another for your races or do you just get up and GO?

Rainy Day Workout #2: Marathon weekend

Today is the Twin Cities Marathon and it has been blustery and wet for a few days!! Here's hoping it's a great one for all the runners!!

If it's not so nice and you don't want to venture out, here's a great runners workout you can do at home on any rainy day:

• Warm up with 1 min of Jumping Jacks (they are NOT just for gym class, these will get your HR up!)
• Move into 20 Squats with body weight
• 15 lunges on each leg with body weight
• 15 push ups
• 15 triceps dips
• 30 bicycle crunches
• 2 min of running in place
• 20 jumping jacks
• 20 Jumping squats where you reach to the ceiling at the top of your jump
• 15 lunges on each leg with a lateral raise using 5-10lb hand weights
• 20 hanging dead lifts with 10lb hand weights (tip at the hip and lift your hips as you bend down, bend just till the hams pull.)
• Laying on the ground do 20 chest flys with 5-10lb weights in each hand
• 30 triceps dips
• 20 Jumping squats where you reach to the ceiling at the top of your jump
• 60 seconds of plank and 30 seconds of side plank on each side.
• End with 1 min of jumping jacks and some easy static stretching, being sure to stretch your quads and hamstrings!

It should take you about 20 min to run through the workout once. If you WANT to, you can run through twice.

By strength training the large muscle groups: quads, glutes and hamstrings you will build and increase speed in your runs. By combining the cardio with the strength, you will burn more calories than doing them alone or on different days which is best if you are doing a short workout at home for max results!

Side plank

good bicycle form