I signed up for jillianmichaels.com. I get a workout to do four days a week. I am free to add other workouts on top of these as I wish. It is also T minus 17 days to my first 5K so I am an exercising fool right now.
Last night I had a workout that emphased a lot of lunges. I was cheating. The workout are set up as five circuits. Some of them have craziness like jumping rope or jumping jacks in them. I was doing this last night after working 10 hours and then eating. So I did all the leg and ab work but skipped the cardio stuff. I knew I was going for a run this morning.
My goal today was to get up early and do two miles without stopping.
First fail – I fell back asleep when the SO left so I didn’t get going as early as I wanted. But, I did make myself get out of bed and go.
Then, thanks to Jillian and her lunges, my butt hurt! Not a great way to start off running. I walk about a quarter mile first to warm up. I was hoping that my soreness would go away. But halfway through the warmup I noticed that my foot was hurting like there was something wrong with my sock. I stopped, took off my shoe and found a cut on the top of my big toe.
We get random foot lacerations all the time because we are attacked in the middle of the night. Powder, aka Death from Above, will jump from the armoire onto the bed with claws extended and lands on our feet. This looked like a cat injury. What I really needed was a bandaid to cushion it but I was sitting on a downed tree in the middle of the woods. I took a leaf off a bush, praying it wasn’t poisonous, and put it over the cut. It worked perfectly. Hillbilly first aid!
I was able to run the first mile ok. That makes me laugh to type that because at the time of course I was convinced I was dying. The first 1/2 mile is a long gradual uphill with some rolling hills in the center. I stopped once to breathe but kept going. Turning around and heading back down that trail is nice because you think it should be a long gradual downhill but there seems to be a lot of uphill there too. I think it is just messing with me.
When I got back to the main trail the next section is a very steep uphill. I walked up it. That felt like giving up. I’m not sure how much of that was physical tiredness and how much was mental. This park has benches at the top of all these steep uphills. I tell myself that at least I keep moving and don’t have a lie down before I go on. From there I started running again but this part of the trail is super hilly. I ended up walking a lot of the uphills that I can usually run. Of course I’ve never run a mile before trying them before either. They usually come early in the run.
I’m discouraged because I’m not able to run as far as I think I should be able at this point. I keep telling myself that I’m running hard trails so doing this is like running farther on roads. Now I’m going to put that to the test.
Saturday morning I’m going out to a bike path and see how far I can run on manicured trails. I know that 1.5 miles out there is an old railroad bridge over a stream. It is a good landmark to have as a turn around. There are alos lots of benches there if I need to pass out. I also need to learn what pace I can go on flat ground. I run really slow on trails because it is dangerous. I have no idea how to run in a road race.
After my run I feel like a wreck. I’m exhausted. Way more than usual. I’m not sure what that’s about. My butt hurts even more after hill work. I’m telling myself that it is worth it to fit in smaller jeans everytime it hurts when I sit down!
