Fit on Friday

Happy Friday! For the frivolous part of this post, today I am loving skinny jeans, dangly earrings and sunny, 60-degree Chicago mornings. The latter gives me the feeling that anything is possible. The former -- well, I just feel a little stylish and young today. :-)

I interviewed a personal trainer yesterday about what it means to be "fit" and she talked pushups. There are degrees of fitness of course, and you can measure it a lot of ways. Another trainer today suggested looking at how you feel doing your day-to-day activities -- can you chase your kid at the park, carry groceries, walk up stairs and recover pretty quickly?

The trainer from yesterday said a woman should be able to do at least one full pushup, no girl on-your-knees-style-stuff, either, with your nose touching the floor when you come down. But really, women ought to be able to do 20 of these. With the nose to the floor. Ugh. So, of course I had to try. I got my nose just about an inch off the floor and managed 11 before seriously quivering. She also said that you should do these until you feel like you just can't do another, because exhausting your muscles is the quickest way to grow stronger.

How many boy pushups can you do? That's the homework assignment for the weekend. I will also run 11 miles tomorrow, my last "long" run before my half marathon in two weeks. It's my seventh half marathon, yet I still get a little nervous before double-digit mile runs. No good reason, really.