Floppy?

Jillian Michaels, you've let me down.

I've been thinking that a lot over the past few months, basically every time I go for a hard run and realize that my form is kind of...I guess you can say floppy. Last year I borrowed her book Making the Cut from the library. It was geared for people in good shape but struggling with those last 10 or 20 pounds. Perfect, I thought. I took a look and read through it, although I didn't follow the plans. One thing I took note of, though, was her discussion about body sculpting. Sculpting, she said, is not about becoming super muscular everywhere on your body, it's about strengthening, toning, and building muscles in strategic places for a particular effect. For example, to give herself the look of an hour-glass figure, she builds up her arms but doesn't work her obliques. I thought, "Ooh, maybe I should stop doing all of those crunches and situps and maybe, if I lose some muscle mass, my tummy will shrink a little and my waist might become more waist-like." Well, I stopped doing my ab exercises, and my tummy and waste look exactly the same, but I have no core strength! When I run, I feel kind of floppy, like I don't have the strength to run with the right posture. I noticed that yesterday on my hill repeats. I warmed up and then did a mile in 9:15 on the treadmill before heading to the hill outside. I ran 8 repeats up the hill with jog recoveries on the way down, for a total of 6:16 minutes of up-hill running. On some of the last repeats I felt like I just wasn't carrying myself right anymore. I am improving overall, as I noticed since I was able to jog all of the recoveries instead of walking, which is very encouraging, but the whole tummy/waist sculpting thing certainly didn't help me out. Maybe next time I should follow the diet and exercise plans instead of pulling a few hints here and there from them.
Anyway, for next week's hill workout, I'm thinking of running up a long, sustained hill, like the one that killed me in the last race. My 5K on June 20th is a few minutes down the road from where that race was, so I expect the terrain to be similar.
Ever on.