I’m quitting quitting

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

I’m a quitter. I freely admit it. I hope you have your reading glasses on, and don’t quit on me. Because this post is loooooong. What can I say? I have like 9 months to atone for.

It all goes back to my childhood. I quit trying to be an older sibling, so I ended up an only child. When I was a young swimmer, I switched events because my friend started beating me. I figured, if I’m not doing that event anymore, she isn’t really beating me.

Then in college, when I did horribly in Chemistry my first semester, I quit on my dream to become a doctor. Because it was too hard, and because I was no longer the best at schooling. I was used to basically just breathing and getting straight A’s. In college- not so much. So I just switched to a major that I couldn’t fail at. And I ended up in law school. Where all my greatest dreams came true. Ummmmm.

When I took up running, I was finally doing something that I felt I could succeed at again. Because I didn’t excel as a collegiate swimmer or a future doctor or even a future lawyer (though somehow I ended up with a JD and a job). I hadn’t ever run a half marathon before, so my first half was a PR. And then my second, and my third, and so on. Then I picked up marathon running, and that resulted in PR’s. Until one day it didn’t. One day, when I knew I hadn’t put in the work and I went out too fast, I saw a non-PR on the horizon. So I quit. I walked, and I jogged, and I walked, then I came up with some lame excuse. And promised myself I wouldn’t quit again.

Then motherhood came along. And I learned how you can’t quit. You can’t just stop waking up for your baby, you can’t lay down and cry when she is sick and needs you. You can’t stop going to work when it’s too hard, or let your baby stick her finger in an electrical outlet. It just ain’t gonna happen- unless you want someone to call the authorities on you.

I started training for a marathon when SuperGirl was about 7 months old. And guess what? I didn’t quit. I finished within about 5 minutes of my PR, which I considered pretty good for someone who had to pump then strap on two bras in order to go out for a long run. I felt like maybe my luck had changed.

But then I messed up my shoulder and had two surgeries in the first 18 months of SuperGirl’s life, and it all kind of spiraled down from there. I couldn’t get my groove back. Gosh, I so feel for Stella. I dabbled in stuff- bootcamp here, cycle there, running shorter distances. Then I got pregnant and it was like “YES, I have an excuse not to train as hard or an explanation for why I didn’t PR.” Can you believe that crap?

I ran a half when I was pregnant with SuperBoy, and it was so liberating running for a pregnancy PR. I had no real time to beat, so it was such an enjoyable experience. I PR’d a 10k at 28.5 weeks pregnant, because I had never run a 10k (that distance is the WORST bt dubs). I did not really run during my pregnancy with SuperToddler, because I was nursing a back injury and decided to take up Crossfit instead. Huh? That totally makes sense.

Doing Crossfit during that pregnancy was awesome because everything was relatively new. Double unders! Box jumps! Snatches! Thrusters (DEVIL!!!) Being pregnant, kicking ass and taking names- it felt so good. I was on top of the world again. I was THAT woman Crossfitting with a very noticeable baby bump, and everybody noticed my fat ass waddling around the building carrying a sand bag. It felt good to be the best at being pregnant and exercising. HOW DUMB IS THAT???

After having SuperGirl I was convinced I would bounce right back and finally do an unassisted pullup – because seriously, trying to learn how to do an unassisted pullup for the first time ever, when you weigh 20 pounds more than normal, it’s not that easy. I would crush my back squat and deadlift PR’s because those were pregnancy PR’s and everybody knows that you have to hold back when pregnant. Right? Well I let the proverbial cart get ahead of the horse, and injured myself again and again. Have we discussed where I can purchase a nice bubble to reside in? Preferably one made by Lululemon? I’ll even settle for Athleta. Or that Ivy Park crap from Queen Bey.

I’ve spent the better part of a year learning how to accept my body’s limitations. I’m not 25 anymore. I am fairly certain that SuperToddler broke my body and she’s very VERY lucky she’s so cute and sleeps 13 hours a night, because otherwise I would be super pissed. My thyroid tanked, I am a good 15 pounds over my normal fighting weight, my other hormonal dealio things are whacked (I blame ‘roids- not the fun make you super ripped kind, but the “I have pneumonia” or “my neck is screwed” kind), and my spine is definitely a wonderland. So where do I go from here?

For starters, I have been channeling my inner competitor at Flywheel since last spring. There is this Torqboard that is fantastic/horrible for maniacs like myself. You can see how you stack up to your competition, or you can elect not to participate in the board, in which case you are only competing against yourself. That’s cool I guess, but I would rather see your name in lights (unless you are beating me). SuperDad is concerned that this is only further fueling the fire that is my competitive psychosis, but I disagree, sorta. Yeah, I get very wrapped up in my score. But I also try to learn new ways to improve. I listen to my body, and when it’s sore, I just do what I can. I figure out different ways to engage my abs, my hamstrings, my BOOTY, and even my feet! It has made me so much stronger in so many ways. There are SO many times I have wanted to quit, and I’ve only followed through with quitting like ~~20%~~ 40% of the time. That’s better than 100%, right? Throw me a bone here.

Although the status of my neck is still up in the air (read: I may need another surgery. I know, I don’t want to talk about it), I have decided to give myself an attainable goal to work toward. I am going to Vancouver to run the Lululemon Seawheeze Half Marathon this August. I will get to meet some amazing ladies that have helped me get through the past year. Seriously, some of the kindest, funniest, most incredible people I have ever had the pleasure of “meeting” in the way we 21st century earthlings meet. I can’t wait to snuggle them and braid their hair and spend alllll the monies on French pastries (do they have those in Vancouver? Because they should) and poutine and special edition Lulu goodies that we will camp out for. Because we are legit crazy.

And that is what is going to keep me from quitting. This is I want to experience so badly. Meeting people who I have laughed and cried with, running, partying, doing the yoga thang, shopping, and seeing THIS (that’s Vancouver right? Cuz I googled Vancouver and this image appeared)!

Van

Will I get a PR? Probably not. Will I quit? Nope. I’m done quitting. Which I guess makes me a quitter still.

I AM ALIVE

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

Wow, I am the WORST BLOGGER EVER. Seriously.

But I have a great excuse. Bear with me for a moment. I had ~~another baby!~~ neck surgery. Well, that only explains the last five months of inactivity. But the three months before that, I was dealing with some serious low back and neck issues which made running and being anything other than a sloth pretty difficult. I think I averaged about 15 miles per week of running. That was pretty impressive, I know.

Anyway, fast forward to January 17, 2015. This happened. An anterior cervical discectomy and fusion at C5-6. They removed the C5-6 disc and replaced it with some screws, or something.

And this is what it looked like on the outside. I’m sorry, I can’t help that I’m sexy. My mama came to help me recover, which was very nice of her, especially during almost tax season (she is a CPA). We spent two nights in a fancy hotel with Super Girl, and I watched tv, read trashy magazines, drank stuff through a straw, and Vicodin-texted people. It’s almost as fun as ambien texting. Almost. Super Girl told me I needed to go to lululemon to get a scarf to cover my neck hole, so of course, I did.

The next several weeks were tough. I wasn’t allowed to drive for two weeks, or lift more than a gallon of milk for 6 weeks, which meant I couldn’t pick up my own kids, including Super Baby. Which also means that Super Dad had to ramp up his super parenting skills exponentially, which you wouldn’t think possible, given that he already does everything around here. He would go and get Super Baby from her crib in the middle of the night and set her down beside me in the bed so I could nurse her. Then he would put her back in her crib. Sidebar: WHY did my third baby decide to be the one who was a crappy sleeper? Super Girl and Super Toddler slept through the night at like 7 days old. Not really, but within the first three months of life. Super Dad also had to take them to daycare and pick them up every day for a few weeks. I eventually got to the point where daycare would help me bring the kids out to the car so that I could at least pick them up at the end of the work day. I also couldn’t really be alone with Super Baby because if she needed to be picked up, I couldn’t exactly rely on Super Girl to do it. Although she is freakishly strong for a 5-year-old.

Do you guys know about parenting points? It’s where one parent accumulates points (to be cashed in at a later date) by doing things like watching all the kids for a weekend, or getting up with the baby in the middle of the night, or what have you. Well, Super Dad accumulated about 749,204,573 points during my recovery. He has cashed in approximately 3,200 of them during a recent trip to Colorado. So I am still seriously in the red.

Another awesome thing happened in the winter. We got a ton of ice and snow. About three weeks after surgery, I slipped and fell on the ice, which is ~~definitely~~ not something you want to happen when you are recovering from a cervical fusion. I was starting to feel a lot better post-surgery. I had regained much of the strength in my left hand which I had lost, and my thumb and hand pain were almost gone. But after I fell, I began having this horrible nerve pain in my right shoulder. I know, I should play the lottery because I have the best luck ever! Well, guess what? To this day, I am still dealing with that pain. I managed to herniate the disc below where I had my fusion. Why? Because when you have a fusion, the levels below and above are at greater risk for herniation. So, yeah, that’s fun.

I am treating with my orthopedic surgeon and a pain management specialist, and have gotten two epidural steroid injections, several trigger point injections, and am going to start physical therapy. I do electric stim at home too. In the mean time, my running has been virtually nonexistent because the jostling seems to bother me. And I am seriously boo-hooing because I haven’t been able to go to Madabolic Raleigh since the new year (seriously, if you are in Raleigh, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Asheville, Greenville, or one of those other ‘villes, you NEED to go. They have an awesome program going and the owners of the Raleigh location are the sweetest people ever). But I have been going to Flywheel a lot because it is low impact and it totally feeds my competitive illness. If I’m not in first place at the end of a class, I feel like I just wasted $20. It’s the only thing I can win at these days, besides eBay and “how many times a day can you yell at your kids?” contests.

I am also turning around my diet with the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which is basically Paleo. I think, I’m not sure. I never really looked into Paleo before because I was 100% convinced I could never give up bread. As we all know from my blog name, I am super into carbs. Like, the bad kind. I am hoping that putting the kibosh on gobbling sweets and swigging Diet Pepsi will help with my pain and some other health issues I won’t get into here. More on that in my next post, which I PROMISE will not be in 8 months. I am only on day 2 of the detox and so far it is going pretty well. If by “pretty well” you mean “in a way that makes me wish I could be in a medically induced coma for the next 20 days.” No really, it isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, minus the excruciating amount of time I have to spend prepping food and cooking. Which is (how many times can you divide zero into one hour?) times more than I typically spend on those things each day.

But first, I leave you with two delicious things:

1) The Banana Vanilla Bean N’oatmeal that I had for breakfast this morning. To die for.

2) This baby. Who needs to be eaten, immediately. Babies are Paleo, right?

Stronger

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

In honor of the Blue Ridge Relay this weekend, which many of my ~~super crazy~~ awesome friends are doing this weekend, I thought I would regale you with the tale of my “hill work” last Saturday. Super Dad, Super Baby, Super Girl, and I were in the mountains for the holiday, and my only options were run, walk, use a 30 year old recumbent bike, or sit around. While I did choose the latter for two days, I decided to push myself a bit on Saturday.

I haven’t been running much because of my back, but I have been feeling better, so I figured I would go for a run in the beautiful fresh mountain air. When I say I did hill work, that is an understatement. I typically bellyache over having to cover 50 feet of elevation change during a one hour run. I will zig zag up and down the same street 12 times just because it is flat and I cannot drag my butt up another hill. I reason with myself that I can either keep running on flat ground, thereby getting more miles in, or walk up a hill/go home. That said, I know that running hills makes you stronger and faster, and I have gotten a lot better about incorporating it into my workouts because they are simply unavoidable in Raleigh. But that doesn’t mean I like em!

The running I did on Saturday quite possibly induced the most pain I have ever known while exercising. I started at the house where we were staying, then ran to the main road, which was about .6 miles down the mountain. Running that steep downhill (about a 45% grade at points) is not easy. But you do go pretty damn fast. Then I turned around to go back up. Uhhhh, what was I thinking? I ended up sprinting for a minute then completely stopping for 30 seconds, all the way back up that “hill.” Then I did the whole thing again, running for marginally longer stretches on the way back up. My total running time was an average of 6:33/mile.

I’m not going to pretend there’s any way my average would have been any faster than 9:30/mile had I not made it into an interval workout. Just standing looking up the gravel road during my breaks was painful. I could barely catch my breath. Mountain air is thinner right? Ok, I know it wasn’t the Pike’s Peak Marathon, but I am not used to this kinda stuff.

The point is that I know my body has limits, and I wanted to test them without the end result being me lying in the yard of some bearded mountain man with a pack of wild dogs sniffing my lifeless carcass. Plus, when you do hill work, you don’t just run up a giant mountain for 5 minutes straight, unless you are one of those ~~maniacs~~ super dedicated, adventurous people who does the Blue Ridge Relay. Normal people either do short bursts for 10-20 seconds, or longer intervals of 1-2 minutes. I know this workout, however short, made me a better runner.

Today, pushing the kids in the double stroller, I gobbled up the rolling hills in our neighborhood like Miss Pacman taking down cherries. She eats those right? I won’t credit the ease with which I knocked out four double stroller miles to a few measly miles of interval work on a mountain, but the perspective was nice. And the feeling that even though I haven’t been able to run in the last month, the cross training has really kept me stronger than I expected.

So here’s to hills or mountains, pick your poison this weekend. Good luck to all you crazies!

How to live in the present

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” – Henry David Thoreau

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have you ever heard these quotes? Or seen the Wikihow page on 7 steps to “live in the moment”? Gurus and philosophers, therapists and motivational speakers; they are always espousing the idea that you can’t live in the past or the future- you have to live in the present. That’s all well and good, but I can’t live in the present unless I can look toward the future.

I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately, as you may have noticed by my lack of activity here. Not being able to do all the things I like to physically has been emotionally taxing on me. I quickly resigned myself to a life of water aerobics, Instagram, and Words with Friends. But I found a way to live in the moment, by spending more time with my family, watching SuperBaby learn to do awesome new things every day, and helping Super Girl with her new blog .

My back isn’t completely fixed now, but it seems to be getting somewhat better. I have been trying to ease back into things but that never really goes that well for me because I don’t like to lose. Although I am not planning on doing any 50 mile rides or 15 mile runs in the near future, I decided that every day I would just try to figure out what I am feeling up to, and then give it a try (so long as it fit into the family schedule of course). For instance, a quick 18 miles on my bike after work last Friday. On Saturday, I did the same insane circuit/Crossfit-ish/bootcamp class that had all the jump roping last time. I know you all think I am crazy and did not learn my lesson, but I reminded myself that the class is different every week and I can modify. The most recent class had five stations, one minute each. After all five stations, you do one minute of shuttle runs, then go back to the first station. Repeat the whole thing six times.

1) modified handstand pushup. The handstand pushup is pretty big in Crossfit. I have no upper body muscles and little balance or coordination, so I did the version where your knees are on a box. No back problems there.

2) Russian Kettle Bell Swings with 20 lb kettlebell. I did more of a modified American swing, becasue the Russian version engages your core and glutes more, and I was concerned it would bother my back. However, with the American version, you go all the way overhead, which is not so awesome for my right shoulder, which I had operated on twice in 2011.

3) Burpees

4) Chest press with 20 lbs dumbbells

5) Wall balls with a 15 lbs. ball

By the end of class, my shoulders were toast.

I also got a spin class in on Sunday and a ride indoors on my road bike on Monday. My parents got me an early birthday present, this sweet Cycelops Fluid2 Trainer, plus some training dvd’s and other accessories. I have been eyeing this trainer for a while, but couldn’t throw down the cash to buy it because I ~~spend all my money at lululemon~~ am saving up for a minivan/the kids’ college/Disneyworld. So far, the verdict is that it’s a great trainer, but riding on it is soooooo boring. I didn’t watch the dvd though, so that’s probably part of the problem. The thought of going for three hours on it makes me want to fall asleep as I type.

Even though I have gotten some decent workouts in and have tried some new things, I just feel like I’m kind of in an athletic rut because I’m not really training for anything. It makes me live in the past, where I think about when I could just throw on my shoes and go knock out 8 miles like it was nothing. There’s no way I can do the Pinehurst Tri as I had originally planned for early October, because my back is not well enough for me to do more than 20 miles on the bike without me having complete foot numbness for 24 hours thereafter. I also haven’t run longer than 2 minutes consecutively since July. Finally, we don’t even want to go into the disaster that has been my swimming training, because once I realized I was not going to be able to do Pinehurst, I just completely sacked my pool time. Why smell like chlorine when you don’t have to, right?

I decided that a reasonable goal would be to do the last Rex Wellness Sprint Tri on October 13. It is super short and a good compromise because it gives me a goal I can look forward to, but I won’t have to kill myself to get the end result of another triathlon under my belt. It also gives me an excuse to carb load on October 12. Plus, even though I have not been swimming at all, there still should be no more than a minute difference between myself and the top female swimmer (my sister-in-law). She has been doing masters swimming, which involves yardage that I would only do if you held a gun to my head. So yeah, if you put us head-to-head in a 1500, she would be showered and blow-dried by the time I got out of the pool. But a 250, I can handle that 🙂 It’s also a short enough bike and run that it shouldn’t be too taxing on my back. I say this now, but I’ll potentially be walking with a cane on Turkey Day.

So there you have it- all it took was me realizing that I just kind of flounder without something on the horizon that I can look forward to (vacation, birth of a baby, Christmas, a race). You may say that I’m not living in the moment, but I need the promise of the future to help me live in the now. Is that cheesy? Yes. Massively queso-fied. But it’s true. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to need goals to help us enjoy each minute of every day, to understand what the purpose is of each workout, or realize that one day your child will start kindergarten so you may want to work on him/her giving up the pacifier at some point before age 5 (not my kid). What are your goals? Do you live in the present, past, or future?

Needs versus wants

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

Ok, I apologize in advance to any new mothers out there who are getting approximately 79 minutes of sleep in any one stretch at night. Maybe you should just skip this post altogether so I don’t annoy you 🙂

I spoke too soon yesterday… I don’t know if I overdid it during the jump rope/thruster/burpee/squat workout or the steroid taper is just affecting me the same way it did last time (feel awesome the first few days), but I had an awful night of pain which led to lack of sleep. My mom thinks it was the jump roping but I beg to differ. My jump riping resembles a toddler trying to just barely avoid stepping on a dead bug on the sidewalk. No double unders here, just doing enough to not trip over the rope. For years I skipped jumping rope all together because I looked A FOOL whenever I tried. I spent more time getting untangled from the rope than getting any sort of aerobic activity in.

Anyway, I know that no one really cares, but I need my sleep. I am seriously like a 2 year old in that respect. Sleep helps you regenerate your brain cells and recover both mentally and physically from the day. I know I read that somewhere. It has to be science, why else would it be so important for babies to get sleep?

Here’s the thing- Prednisone makes you wired. But not only was I amped up from the Prednisone, I was also in so much pain that I could not sleep. I finally fell asleep around 3am after watching two episodes of Real Housewives of New Jersey and eating 4th meal. Don’t judge- I don’t judge you for watching Duck Dynasty or The Bachelorette. I mean really, how is The Bachelorette still on? No one ever finds their “one true love” on that show?! And as for the food, well, I was hungry from burning so many calories writhing in pain. At least it wasn’t Taco Bell.

I couldn’t sleep in, but was really savoring crawling back into bed for a nap with Super Girl. We had the naps synchronized perfectly with Super Baby and this never happens because the kid is a sleep maniac. He still typically takes two naps a day, which means one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Super Girl’s comes sandwiched in the middle. If you have kids that aren’t super close together in age, you have probably encountered this form of house arrest several times. You can’t leave the house from 10am to 5pm. They should have just given Martha Stewart a baby and 3 year old as her punishment. Dated reference? Perhaps. I exaggerate somewhat, but you get my point.

Well, today the stars had aligned, which had me so excited in the hour leading up to what would be their simultaneous nap times. I was smug in fact. And of course, I was first in too much pain to relax and then, once the pain was under control, the Prednisone kept me from going to sleep. So although Super Baby rocked two hours, as per usual, and Super Girl is still asleep, 2.5 hours later, I am wide awake but utterly exhausted. And I don’t even have a 50 mile bike ride in the morning to show for it. Curses!

Sorry for the rant. At least I felt well enough yesterday to get in a killer workout, play with my kids, and take Super Dad to H&M for the first time. Super Baby was unimpressed with the car shirt, as evidenced by the photo below. It was neither a need nor a want.

I also can’t complain because I felt well enough to have an awesome dinner with my super awesome neighbors. Seriously, it is like we moved to Pleasantville. I have never known so many awesome people in such a concentrated area. Really, they are so awesome that I have used the word awesome five times in this paragraph alone. It is something we have wanted for a long time, and we have finally found it.

So even though I want to be out there biking or running, all I really need is to feel better so I can be a good mom to my kids and wife to Super Dad. And I need my sleep of course. You mothers of newborns out there, if you have read this far without getting super frustrated with me, you will know what I’m talking about when that baby starts sleeping 🙂

PS- if you want to get a glimpse into a day in the life of me, Super Baby, Super Kid, and Super Dad, check out my Instagram handle: willrunforbiscuits (shocker). I typically will post workouts, photos of Super Baby wearing a Rapunzel wig, and the delicious and clean meals Super Dad creates for us during the week. Check it out if you want or need to. Although I honestly can’t think of a single sane, non stalkerish person who would need to follow my Instagram.

Found

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

I found two things this week!

The first is totally relevant because it involves workout apparel. I found these insane lululemon Speed Shorts that came out last week and sold out online in minutes. I missed them, and also missed them in stores in Raleigh. People were apparently lining up at the door waiting for the store to open so they could buy these shorts. Of course, I saw this as a business opportunity, because I sell lululemon stuff I no longer want on ebay. These ~~lunatics~~ women will pay MORE than what the clothing retailed for originally. For used stuff. So I knew that I had to have these shorts, not only because they are cute, but because they sold out so fast, I would be able to make a killing on them down the road. I am actually at the point where I don’t buy any new lulu unless I have sold a used piece. That’s reasonable right?

I discovered, from an inside source (friend who is a manager at lululemon) that the store in Charlotte got the shorts late Wednesday night, so I implored my buddy- we will call her Lisa- to go to the store as soon as it opened Thursday and buy them for me. She agreed, not realizing that she was signing herself up for texts from me every 5 minutes beginning at 9am Thursday. I am surprised that a restraining order was not taken out. The shorts were secured, and delivered to another friend, “Harry,” who then transported them in an armored car to Asheville, where we were for a bachelorette party. Funds were exchanged via Paypal, and all was right in the world. And now Super Dad knows how deep my addiction runs. It’s a disease really.

Ok, so on to the second thing I found: my endorphins! I started my second round of oral steroids to treat the herniated disc in my back, and fingers crossed- I think it’s working this time. Assuming I continue to get better, I won’t need an epidural steroid injection or surgery. My friend “Richard Simmons” asked me if I had ever seen an epidural needle before. Ummm, I have given birth twice and I was induced both times, so yes, I have most definitely seen an epidural needle before.

Anyway, because I am feeling better, I naturally went full steam ahead and did a class at the Y this morning. Really, I felt this was a responsible decision because I still can’t really run and think that I am not ready to sit on a bike for a couple hours. The class used to be called Intensity, but then the Y started to offer the Insanity classes that a lot of ~~lunatics~~ people have been doing, so Y-goers got confused. Thus, the Y changed the name of the Intensity class to Muscle Madness. It’s basically like a Bootcamp and CrossFit all rolled into one. I ~~hated~~ liked the workout so much that I wanted to share it.

WOD 1:
1:50 of jump rope, then 10 seconds of thrusters (I used 15 lb dumb bells)
1:40 jump rope, 20 seconds thrusters

… And so on, until you get down to only 10 seconds of jump rope and 1:50 of thrusters.

It ends up being 11 rounds = 22 minutes of activity with NO REST. Holy shoulder death.

WOD 2:
1:50 air squats, then 10 seconds of box jump burpees
–> –> –>
10 seconds air squats, 1:50 box jump burpees

Again, 11 rounds = 22 minutes of exercise.

I had to modify the box jump so that I stepped down instead of jumped down. And the burpees were of course full chest to ground burpees, as my friend “Nelly” always made us do in Athletic Conditioning in Charlotte. It’s NOT a burpee unless your chest touches the ground people! Check out her blog blog here!

This workout is perfect for a big group exercise class because you can just use a step with risers if you don’t have a box, and you only need a jump rope and one set of weights. Plus you can have partners take turns deciding whether to start with 1:50 of the thrusters or the jump rope if you are pressed for steps/boxes. Also, modifications can be made like changing the box jump burpee to a burpee with a jump squat, or burpee with a switch lunge jump. There’s something for everyone 🙂

This workout nade my shoulders and legs burn, and I think this kind of hurt is directly proportional to the endorphins created. So I am a very very happy girl today, because as you know, my endorphins were lost for the last week or so.

Did you find/buy/try anything new this week? Is there anything I should try next week, besides abridging my blog posts?

Temporary insanity

Posted by willrunforbiscuits

I haven’t run in a week. The downside: it’s making me a little crazy and unmotivated to blog because I don’t get the same satisfaction from just riding my bike. The upside: I am spending more time on my bike, which is clearly my weakest of the triathlon disciplines.

Why haven’t I run in a week? Because for the past several weeks, my left calf and foot have been getting that weird numb and tingly feeling that you get right before or after your leg falls asleep. And my foot has felt swollen to the point where if I wear a shoe that’s at all constricting, it really hurts. I thought that it was just an issue with how I was lacing my shoes, as the weird sensation would kind of go away after an hour or so. But over time, I have noticed that I have that numb and tingly sensation all the time. I asked a friend, who is the world’s greatest orthopedic physician’s assistant, about my symptoms via facebook. He immediately pointed me to this article on the interwebs about chronic exertional compartment syndrome. The symptoms fit me pretty much to a tee, which is not atypical when I google physical ailments. But since I did not initiate the googling in this case, I think I have legitimate reason for concern.

My PA friend suggested I take ~~one~~ two weeks off of running. I thought I could slide by with one but he called me out on it on facebook. That’s what you get when you overshare about your exercise habits. This feels like an eternity. I really felt like I was starting to make some headway improving my speed and stamina, but I’d rather lose a bit of ground that have my calf cut open. Or pay the surgical and anesthesia fees associated with said calf cutting. So far, I have not had any abatement of my symptoms.

I decided to push my international distance triathlon to October 5. It will be in Pinehurst, which is much hillier than White Lake, which I had originally intended. I want to give myself plenty of time to recover from whatever is going on with my left leg and foot, plus with all the hill training here in the Triangle, I should have an advantage over any flatlanders who come from Wilmington. Right? Right?

Instead of running, I have decided to concentrate on my cycling, and have done a 34 mile outdoor ride. It was my first ride over 25 miles so I feel a little better about doing 30 miles during my next tri. I think our average was 18.5 mph including stops for traffic lights, and I was not at all tired afterward, so I can’t complain. I am really just trying to figure out what gear I am most comfortable in while on the flats, and how hard I can push myself for 20 miles, 30, 40, etc. I finally had a professional fit me on my bike, had aerobars put on, and got new carbon pedals which I am in LOVE with. A tri bike is not in my immediate future unless someone would like to generously sponsor me, so I am doing the best with what I have. At least it’s not a mountain bike!

Last night I did Insanity at the Cary YMCA. That workout seriously is very appropriately named. What kind of lunatic would/could do this every day? I seriously wanted to quit after warmup. No weights involved other than your body weight, but very little rest. I had such a massive puddle of sweat beneath me, I almost slipped and busted my face open on the gym floor. It was really attractive. This morning I could barely get out of bed I was so sore. I think it will be a nice little cross training activity that I will try to do every other week, after I have tapered for like 3 days. I just need to make sure I bring lots of towels next time. An an oxygen tank.

Tonight I have a swim/spin brick on tap. I have not been in the pool at all since the Triangle Tri, unless you include holding Super Baby in our community pool and trying to keep him from submerging himself underwater repeatedly. The kid thinks he is either David Blaine or Michael Phelps. I am not sure. For my heart’s sake, I hope he is the latter. I am giving myself the excuse that most people who do tris are just barely able to stay afloat, so I have that natural advantage. But when it comes down to it, 1500 meters two months from now are really going to suck if I don’t buckle down. Plus, the women who are beating me in my age group are super hardcore and are legit in the water. I am hoping they train at least five days a week, so that once I start swimming more than twice a month, I will start destroying them. Ha.

Getting back to my temporary insanity (Insanity workout unrelated), I am really just trying to listen to my body because if I am going to complete almost 3 hours of activity in October, then I need to be close to 100%. Granted, I have run for over 3 hours in my marathons in the past, but this is a whole new ballgame. Being unable to run, even if it is only temporary, takes away my security blanket since running is something I know how to do, and I can do it pretty much anywhere, regardless of what is going on with the weather. So I need to know what you triathletes do when you can’t run? What are your favorite cross-training activities? And how much strength training do you do? I feel like I am really dropping the ball in that area and don’t know if I should be just going to the gym and lifting or if doing a class with high reps/low weights is enough.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. I am planning to ride FIFTY miles on Sunday, just for fun, so I will let you know if I survive!