Friday yeah!

And the day 2 soreness continues. My legs still hurt (this is day 3 post for them) but today my upper body is in fully sore mode from Wednesday night. OMG. My triceps, my neck which I really think is a combo of shoulders and back and of course my chest. So basically everything but biceps.  But mostly triceps. Which is not surprising because I really did do a ton of triceps work the other night.  And today I feel it whole heartedly.

But my legs still hurt. Sitting down or standing up produces a cringe on my face.  Such is my life.  Last night I did not have as hard of a time making myself go to the gym. I was determined, most likely because I knew I just had to get thru an easy session last night and then today would be rest day.  By the time I got to the gym last night I was pretty exhausted really.  I knew I had killed both upper and lower body this week so there wasn’t much else left for me to do. In fact, I did not have a real plan other than I needed to run 3 miles. 

And I use the term run loosely. My body was pretty just plain old exhausted.  Running seemed hard. This is how I know I have reached my limits.  But I had mentally decided that a 3 mile run was in order so even if that meant going slowly, which I did, I didn’t really care.  All I could muster was a 5.5 speed on the treadmill and even that seemed hard.  Thus me knowing I was tired.  I ran my 3 miles and just felt fatigue.  But in part of thinking on the old treadmill I started doing math in my head.  7 miles Monday, 4.5 miles Tuesday, 2 miles Wednesday equals 13.5 miles.  Another 3 miles means 16.5 miles and somehow I hate off numbers so I decided that I really needed to complete just a half mile more to get me to 17 miles.  Yes, this is the crazy brain of an obsessed woman.

So after I did my 3 miles. I turned the treadmill back on and this time put the speed at a 6.2 just to get it over with and did another ½ mile so that I could honestly say I had run 17 miles in the past 4 days.  17 just sounds better than 16.5.  Eh, its splitting hairs but the truth is my legs are tired and sore and sometimes so long as you are not injuring yourself it’s good to force yourself to run with tired sore legs because I suspect this is what all of miles 20-26.2 are going to feel like.  Hell and tired and sore.  So mentally forcing myself thru a little bit is okay.

After I forced out that last half mile I went down to the weights.  It was a struggle deciding what I could actually work since most things were sore. I ended up doing 5 sets of 65 pound bench press. 65 pounds is a lot generally speaking. At least when I am already so tired and sore.  But I managed thru.  I did a couple more upper body exercises and then did a bunch of bicep curls because this is the only muscle group that wasn’t screaming at me.  But overall I was just tired.  My calorie burned ticker was at like 365 calories but mentally I was done.  I wanted to get to 400 calories so I knew to quickly do that I needed cardio but I couldn’t stand the thought of more treadmill so I just got on the elliptical for a few minutes to push me over the edge. Yes sometimes this is the crap we make ourselves do.  It had been near an hour and a half and I was just done so I finally left with a smile on my face and relief knowing today was a solid rest day.

I snapped this photo because I was just thrilled to be done.

And was proud that in the last 4 days I had run 17 miles, did a solid 1.5 hours of lower body strength training, and 1.5-2 hours of upper body strength training.  Resulting in a whole lot of sore.  Not too bad for 4 days.  But I do constantly have that fear that all the running and lack of crazy strength training is going to make my muscles disappear.  I have worked hard for the muscles and am not crazy excited about them going away. Thus every now and then I have to do a reality check and make sure they are still there, which resulted in this photo.

And yes, I know its slightly vain and all but I do try and take photos so that I have the physical evidence of where I was at a period of time. Something to compare to.  In case in 4 months’ time my muscles do disappear from all the cardio.  Every person at the gym tells you that excessive cardio will destroy your muscles.  I understand and yet I want to run.  But I don’t really want my muscles to go away either.  It’s a horrible catch 22.  So thus, I try and do it all.  Sometimes to the point of exhaustion you know.

But that’s why these rest days are so important. That’s why today I rest.  And Saturday will mostly be a rest day.  I am doing a 5k with my sister.  I will encourage her to jog at points, as she has been trying to do a little bit of jogging but she can’t run a whole 5k at this point.  So it will be a nice run/walk combo and that’s okay with me.  The way I feel today I am not sure I would want to run tomorrow anyway.  I might need 2 rest days to recoup from this week. 

But Sunday morning I wake up and run a half marathon.  It’s time for me to do another one and I’m ready.  I need it.  I’m just sick and twisted like that I suppose.  I “need” to run.   Between the 5k and the 13.1 on Sunday that means this week, the 7 day period , I will have run 33 miles. Not too bad for a week.  I am slightly worried that I am going to burn out though. Basically I’ve got 15 weeks until my marathon.  15 weeks seems really close honestly, but it’s still a lot of weeks to run, and run and run.  But we will see.  It’s an interesting process and I’m glad I am doing it.  Testing myself and officially training, something I was certainly convinced that I never wanted to do.  But this training doesn’t seem that awful and it feels manageable to me so I guess that’s the only reason I’m really going for it. I’ve looked at some training plans that are really intense and something that I would never want to tackle but honestly I don’t have any crazy time goal, I just want to finish it.  And when I do, I get this medal. It was revealed today.  This is going to be my Maui marathon medal.

So there is that. That is exciting.  This medal is kind of the whole reason that I am running all these extra miles, and committing so much, so that I can have this one medal that says marathon on it.  Crazy I know.  It’s really about more than the medal but its ultimately the little symbol of these entire 5 months I am putting into this process.  It’s about so much more I realize but you get it. When I see this medal it will symbolize all the determination, hard work and dedication and mental fortitude I have exhibited to meet my goal. And that is pretty cool.

All good things ahead for me.  I get to go do packet pick up for my half this afternoon because low and behold its actually in my own town!  This has never happened. Like ever.  I have never ran a half marathon in the town where I live. I actually live in the freaking capitol city of Oregon and yet we don’t have that many half marathons here.  In all fairness Portland is our big city and thus it make sense that races would be mostly there.  But still I’m excited to run one in Salem.  Because it means no commuting the morning of.  I get to get out of bed and pretty much almost be there.  It’s quite crazy.  So nonetheless I get to go to a local store here in town and pick up my shirt and bib today.  I do have to wake up early tomorrow morning to drive over an hour for the 5k race.  But eh, I don’t mind it so much really.  If I did, I would never run races.  I kind of think the drive is part of the experience honestly.  Plus this one is with my sister and brother in law so it’s always nice to have a little different take on things.

I am anticipating a very fun weekend for me.  This is my ideal kind of weekend.  Lots of fun headed my way. I need it after the past 2 kind of shitty weekends I’ve had.  Now I just pray that in the next 48 hours all my muscles loosen up a little and the sore factor goes down a few notches.  I don’t really want to run a half on sore legs.  I mean, I will, but I’d rather not.  And to think on my leg day I didn’t even go extremely heavy or hard or push myself all that much.  Let’s just say I am quite capable of a shit ton more.  I was trying to avoid excessive soreness. But I suppose I could really be a lot more sore. I have been on many occasions so I shouldn’t complain.

Have a wonderful weekend my friends. I am going to try too!