Kicking my own ass

I’d say it’s truly a mixed blessing when you are sore from kicking your own ass. My legs hurt today, like a lot, and that is all my own fault. I have no one to blame but me. I guess that’s good.  I’d say yeah me for working so hard if my legs weren’t throbbing just sitting here at my desk. But I guess I am going to say yeah me anyway.  I wasn’t sure last night if I was really going to reach this point so I suppose I work harder than I think.

This is what happened, I went to the gym and ran. I just wanted to run a whole 5k, 3.1 miles in less than 30 minutes. I haven’t done that in a while. This requires running at a speed greater than 6 miles per hour. But since it’s a shorter distance I thought lets just push myself and see. So I set the machine at 6.3 miles per hour and ran. Of course I plugged my headphones in and just went for it. That euphoric  high kicked in and I felt good. I felt like I was actually accomplishing something of value and that is always nice. With a few minutes left I wanted to quit but I made myself finish strong, I actually clocked in 3.1 miles at like 29 minutes 40 seconds and I was happy. Of course the machine kicks into cool down after 30 minutes so I just ran the extra 20 seconds and let it go to cool down. I walked for a minute and then was like I have a little bit left in the tank, lets just finish up 3.5 miles so I bumped up the speed and sprinted out the last bit. 3.5 mile run and I felt alive, sweaty and accomplished.

Walking away from the treadmill to go do legs I wasn’t sure what I had in me, but let me tell you, already being pumped up and energized from running really does help me with my strength training workouts. I left my headphones in and shoved my phone into my bra strap and went for it. I felt crazy high and decided that I was going to kill this leg day. Of course hearing awesome heart pumping music in my ears didn’t hurt. When Katy Perry’s Roar came thru my earbuds I not only smiled but felt myself push just a little more, I am a freaking champion! And I pushed with all my might that heavy weight with my leg.

I did leg exercise after leg exercise enthralled and pumped from a good run and good music and before I knew it, I was truly exhausted, an additional hour and passed (90 minutes total) and I had burned 900 calories total. I was ready to call it quits for the day. Again, in the moment I wasn’t sure how effective my leg workout was actually going to be. Today I am 100% certain it was effective. My quads are throbbing, my ass hurts and I know I worked it.  All crazy excellent signs that apparently I really do know how to kick my own ass. So now, my dirty little plan of yesterday appears to have worked. My legs are honestly quite too fried to actually do a leg work out today so there is just no way that I can handle that in personal training tonight. Plus Amanda saw me doing legs last night so hopefully she won’t go ahead and think that I would do them again tonight. She’s smarter than that so I’m not worried.

Hopefully since its only Tuesday I will have enough time to recover by Saturday to run a half marathon, which I am feeling much better about thanks to my extra running this week. All good things. I feel really proud of my efforts this week and more importantly feel great.  Physical wellness lead to emotional wellness. I feel more in control of things than I have felt in a while. It’s really the process of getting control of the things that you feel like have been spiraling out of control. This is the feeling of satisfaction above all else.

Tonight is personal training and then an hour of Iron Power class. I won’t burn 900 calories tonight by any means, but that is okay. I think I am going to refrain from trying to run tonight as I’ve done some running the past couple days and I think it would be more than fine to give myself a break tonight. Let the personal training kick my ass a little and then let class do the trick. It will most likely be about a 400-500 calorie burn kind of night and that is perfectly fine in my book. That is a totally acceptable amount of calories. Honestly that is a GREAT amount of calories to burn in an evening. I will never complain about burning 400 calories in a workout session.

Overall I just woke up with a smile on my face and that is a great thing! I feel driven and motivated to succeed and I am just never happier than when I have clear goals, my health is in check and I feel this much love and positivity in my life. My heart is bursting with happiness once again.