“Hot, sticky shitty run.” was my Facebook status yesterday. I ran around five in the afternoon, and the temperature was about eighty four degrees. It seems like a dumb time to run, but due to scheduling issues I am running or biking in the afternoons this week. Also, as I told myself over and over again, by the time I get to the running leg of the challenge it will most likely already be hot. I wanted to see how I would do. I thought for my first afternoon run I would run around the middle school track, it is flat and I can track my progress by counting rotations.

So obviously it was not a great experience. First, I twisted my ankle a teeny amount when I was walking in the door. I don’t know exactly how, but since it wasn’t killing me, I went anyway. Second, I was starving. Okay, I am always some form of starving, but I really was hungry. And here is one of the ways I set myself up for failure. I grabbed a small piece of cheese, and figured that would hold me. I wasn’t hungry the whole time but I felt sluggish.

When I got to the track, Iron Man was already there. Iron Man, a twenty or thirty something year old physical specimen, was doing laps, running up and down the bleachers, and pausing from time to time to do push ups and mountain climbers. At first, I envied his fitness, a couple of times around the track and I just envied the fact that he could run without a shirt. I was sweating rivers and let’s face it, I’m never going to one of those girls that chugs around the track in a running bra.

Running around a track sucks. Look, even the picture is boring.

And the run was so much harder. Whenever I run, my thighs and hips feel tight in the beginning, the first long run is always hard and I know I will have to be about twenty minutes into my workout before I really feel as though I can do it without dying.Some mornings are easier but most start the same way.  I am accustomed to waiting that part out. This run never got easier. I did not do a mile. I did keep up with four minutes on and two minutes off for the about forty five minutes, well forty two to be exact. I just couldn’t get started. I tried at first to run around the track four times, figuring that would be about a mile, but after two was done. I then tried walking around the track and running twice around. Then I thought maybe I was putting too much time in between running and that was why my hips and quads weren’t getting loose, so I ran twice around and put a two minute walk time in. This worked out to be about twice around the track. But my thighs and hips stayed tight. Maybe I was getting dehydrated, maybe I didn’t warm up enough, maybe the piece of cheese just wasn’t enough. Maybe, maybe, maybe….

By the last fifteen minutes or so, my ankle throbbed, my whole right leg ached, and it felt as though my thighs and hips were just one tight bunch. I even looked at them to see if they had suddenly transformed into some type of muscle madness like you see on those protein shake bottles. Nope! Whatever muscles were there, were safely tucked under layers and I mean LAYERS of thigh squish.

So how do I change that for next time? I am thinking of running around the neighborhood later this afternoon, and I mean later, like when the heat starts to recede. I chose the track because I thought it would be empty, and basically except for Iron Man it was. But I will take the hills over the boring flat I think. And I will go after dinner, if need be. The reason I run in the morning is because that is when I can fit it in. Let’s face it, the hardest part, okay one of the hardest parts of getting back in shape is the time aspect. Most people my age have full lives, and can’t just take an hour out to exercise. So it has to be created out of nothing. For me that nothing was five in the morning. When I don’t go that early, something is getting pushed aside. Also, the later in the day it gets, the more apt I am to push it aside. Maybe, if it isn’t raining, I will bike tonight instead.

It struck me last night that I have been working at this for almost four weeks and I still can’t really run a mile straight. I have on a track but not just out running.  Even as I have upped my time for running,from one minute to a minute and a half to two minutes,  I don’t feel as though I am getting closer.  I am worried. So I have to do something about this. Obviously my half assed plan of building up running time might take too long to ever run a mile, let alone three. So I thought instead of tracking time I would track distance and increase that. Seemed like a good plan. I have read that you start with half a mile and work your way up. That was the plan for this morning, run half a mile, walk for two minutes, run half a mile, walk for two minutes.

But that didn’t happen. For some reason, as I lay in bed not wanting to leave I decided to run a full mile and walk for two minutes and then run another mile. Why the ridiculous plan? Because that was the way I did it on the track. So I walked for a quarter of a mile and ran. And ran and ran and ran. Up the damn hill and down the hill and up the damn hill again. Ten minutes later I had run a mile. Without blowing chunks! I actually lied to myself half way through and told myself I would stop at three quarters of a mile, just finish going around the block but then when I got there I was so close I just kept running. Plus it was down hill. I tried to remember everything about breathing so I didn’t get a stitch in my side and Runkeeper kept telling me how far I was going and how long it was taking me – my ass is slow, and I tried to keep my back straight and my head up. I’m pretty sure I sounded like something from a bad movie, pulling breaths in and pushing them out with a pathetic damsel in distress sounding “heh, heh” coming from me. This is why I run as early as I can. It ain’t pretty.

I then walked for two minutes. And then did I do it again? HELL NO!!!! But I did increase my time from running two minutes and walking for ninety seconds to running four minutes and walking  between two and two and half minutes. This changed as to whether I ended on a hill – which I always finish. But if I ended on level ground I found I was able to go much more quickly. And I didn’t really mind just running around the block. It helps me to track distance, around the block about two and a half times is a mile. For my cool down, I ran for two minutes and walked for one. This is better than what I was doing last week. So I am going to try to stay with this.

As for goals, they are now pretty easy to set up. Next week I am going to try to stretch out the mile to a mile and a quarter, or a mile and a tenth. I am going to up my time to five minutes running. The end result of this is that I ran/walked for a little over four and a half miles this morning so I am increasing. The bike is an easy goal setter. I am up to biking ten miles on the bike. Next week I would like to up that to eleven miles, and so on and so on.

Here’s a question: Should I up goals in both activities every week? Or should I up one activity at a time? Does anyone have any advice on this?

Finally on Friday I am hoping to do my first brick. I plan to bike for about thirteen miles and then run a mile immediately following. I am, for some reason, super excited about this. Hopefully it won’t rain.

I love to eat!!! And I love to eat just about all kinds of food. My favorite is something someone else (preferably someone who can cook) is making and then cleaning up after.  Fried food, grilled food, well anything really but boiled. Food isn’t meant to be boiled. That’s just wrong. Trust me, there is always a better way. Well, except for maybe pasta. This love of eating can be a very bad combination for someone who is trying to work out so hard. Someone like me for instance.  I have read that people sometimes gain weight when preparing for an event. I know, it’s probably muscle, but I am trying to be realistic. Let’s face it, I am a chubba wubba staring football season in the face. (THANK GOD!!!!!)

 

This abstinence I’ve been practicing will have a real challenge when the Eagles are on and I start thinking…hmmmm, beer! nachos, beer bread and garlic dip! So, when I was walking around starving yesterday, all day, I was grouchy and worried and HUNGRY!!!!  No matter what I ate  yesterday, I just continued to feel hunger. And yes, I drank water.

I only remember one other time feeling that way. The time we first did the Art Museum Loop on our bikes. We went first thing in the morning and did about 9.5 miles. Yesterday I did a little over ten and had the same experience. But I have done ten or longer and not spent the day hungry. So, WHAT???? The hunger carried over to this morning, which caused me to eat a banana before I went out running (costing me around 100 calories before I was even out of bed twenty minutes!) but even so, my run felt sluggish and harder then I would have liked. It took me much longer to feel a rhythm and at no point did I feel as though I was ready to push past my goal of running for two minutes straight. Okay, I did do one four and half minute stretch, but I felt deeply sorry for myself the whole way. Instead of thinking “Just get to the stop sign, just get to the stop sign.” the litany in my head was, “wtf! wtf!” only I don’t think in letters. It felt as though my legs were huge tree trunks I was trying to force forward. On hills I practically walked while panting and called it a jog. I also committed the heinous sin of stopping at the bottom of a hill, before I reached the top with two seconds left before I hit the two minute mark. But since I was pretty sure I was going to decorate my neighbor’s yard, I thought maybe I should keep it to one spot instead of, you know, a continuous spray. But I didn’t. 

It did give me something to think about while I was slowly dying out there in the heat.  Why the change? What could possibly make one day so much harder then the day before. Thursday’s run was awesome!!!! I felt like a rock star. So what happened? This is what I think. I have been trying to vary my diet with healthy, or at least mostly healthy food. I have also been trying to really up the Omega 3’s in my diet. One way I do this is by adding flax seed to oatmeal. Yesterday, that is what I had for breakfast. Since I have two packets that means eight grams of protein. And no real fat. Compare this with my other go to breakfasts: an egg with spinach and cheese on an english muffin or peanut butter and banana on whole wheat bread. The first has upwards of twenty three grams of protein and the peanut butter and banana have at least sixteen grams of protein. Also, they both have some fat in them.  I’m not a dietician but I think this is the big difference. In fact, as I write this, I have just finished my egg, spinach and cheese and I already feel better. 

So even though I did go further then I went before by two hundredths of a mile (yeah, I’m counting that!) and amazingly I did it one minute faster, I wasn’t feeling great. Although, thinking about it now, even though I felt as though I was going to die, I guess I didn’t.

Today I didn’t wake up to work out. It was sort of planned, although I am still not positive that I won’t go at some point. Most plans build in one day off a week and I have read that a day off is important. From the way my legs feel, I totally understand that.I have gone eight days straight which, yesterday, felt hard. The problem is that mentally I hate to take a day off. It not only feels that I let myself down, inside I am afraid that I am setting up a trend. As much as I have been enjoying this, working out doesn’t come as naturally to me as it did in my twenties. Honestly, I sometimes think the joy is something I add retrospectively in the thrill of “I did it.” So when I don’t go, it feels as though I could start a habit of not going. In the past three weeks I have tried to build it into the routine, so maybe Saturday plan not to go. The day is normally inspired by a life event that may cause me to be out later and drinking. I am at an age where that rarely comes around more than once a week, if that. This morning I woke and my legs just ached, so after wrestling with it for about ten minutes, I decided to stay home. And I am already missing it. I stayed in bed until a little before six and now I feel as though I am already behind. And I worry that I made the wrong decision, or I chose it based more on just being tired than an actual day of rest. Truly, I plan to fit in a strength workout today, but I don’t think that counts.

It is the aerobic work outs that build endurance and that tend to make me feel calmer. Although, I have noticed lately, aerobics don’t always put me in a great mood as they did in the beginning. Biking almost always does, but running not so much. Mostly the only thoughts that go through my head go something like this, “Just make it to the stop sign, just make it to the stop sign.” If I am running, it is to the rhythm of my feet but when I bike it just repeats over and over. So here is the weird part I have sort of been avoiding. I have also found that bothersome memories keep coming up. Things I haven’t thought of in years, pop out of nowhere. And the emotions attached tend to be just as strong and as raw. It sort of reminds me of a body detox, which I have never done. Supposedly, when people detox their breath smells bad, they break out, they get congested, and they become emotional. Well, I think if I went any real time without food I would become incredibly emotional.

And, since I am babbling, I have found that even though, like this morning, I sometimes have to really push myself out of bed, this has become the focal point of my whole day. As the day wears on, even when I don’t come back in a good mood, I can’t wait for the early morning time when I get to go again. There are days when everything else feels like clutter in between the time I go biking or running in the morning. And there are days, like yesterday, where I was so bone tired all day that I just want to go to bed so that when I do go out I will be able to put in a good effort. This worries me. I don’t want this to be a passing fad, but a life style. Which, like going vegan, will be hard if my family doesn’t adopt it in some manner. I finally gave up the vegan lifestyle because I felt as though it was driving a wedge between my family and myself.  I don’t want to give this up. I really want this, and not just for the Endurance Race. I want this because….. I have no idea.

Although it has been on my mind, it is something I haven’t really taken the time to make happen. I am talking about the supporting pieces to this new lifestyle, such as stretching, strength training and eating well. Originally, I thought of these as the peripherals, but since that means minor or not as important, I realized I had to change the term.

This is new to me, parts that are just part of the program for other athletes,aren’t always even in my awareness.(Hey I called myself an athlete!!! Might be a little premature.)  Take stretching for instance. I know it is something I need to do, but I constantly forget or run out of time. Until I have a moment like today, where I can barely move my neck without fear of pain. Did it come from biking nine and a half miles yesterday? Or did it come from running this morning? (Yeah, I did two miles!!! Not back to back, but two miles!!!) Either way, even I know that I am suppose to stretch. I just forget, or run out of time. So I am dedicating part of every day to stretching. Maybe even yoga.

Of course, being me, the first thing I do is Google it. Well guess what! I am not suppose to be stretching, stretching is bad. At least not the stretching that I remember, static stretching. There is now dynamic stretching, a way to warm up your muscles before they work. Stretching when your muscles are cold can apparently cause injuries.

So when can you stretch? You are supposed to do dynamic stretching before the run. Here is a video I found on Runners World site. So on Wednesday, when I run again, I am going to try these. Of course this means getting up earlier, because otherwise I don’t know how I will fit it all in.

For biking, there is also debate on the stretching question. Dynamic stretching is recommended before – such as taking your legs through the same range of motion you will use on a bike. After biking, I found eight stretches on the site BikeRadar, (scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page) however, I don’t know when I will find the time to do them. The last one recommends staying in the pose for five to ten minutes; but on the whole 20 to 60 seconds per stretch seems the norm. The longer time is for improved flexibility, which is what I really want. But eight stretches at sixty seconds apiece, two to for times for each stretch leads to an average of twenty- four minutes. That seems like a lot of time, that I don’t have. So I found another site that only has four stretches on it. I think that I will use these four during the workweek and the eight for when I try to do the longer rides on the weekends. Here is a link to the four videos. Also, I read that it is recommended to stretch after you shower from your workout, when warm water will have helped to loosen your muscles. We’ll see how this all goes tomorrow.