"Why you runnin' like b****** with your tail up?"

I censored the title for the benefit of any kiddos who might be looking over their parents' shoulders while they're on Facebook. It's a lyric.

I'm pretty sure anyone who saw me in the Rec could not guess what I was listening to last night. I mean, would you guess (AND HEY IF YOU DON'T LIKE CURSING PLEASE DON'T CLICK THIS AT ALL, THE VERY FIRST LINE HAS A BAD WORD!):

Cypress Hill, Lucy? REALLY? But it's awesome workout music. Oh man it really is. It pumps you up and it has a really good beat. I was on one of those evil stair machines at the time I decided to turn this on and I was instantly revitalized!

I've been trying to push myself harder at the gym. I want my progress back. One of the problems is that I need to have a really good pre-workout snack, keeping in mind I can't eat anything for 90-120 minutes before a workout. Otherwise, stomach cramps just wreck me and I physically can't continue. I often roll right out of bed and out the door, workout clothes in the bag. I'll maybe eat an Erin Baker's Breakfast Cookie 90 minutes before. But that is not sufficient workout fuel, and I usually leave the gym not overworked but hungry. I'd rather leave the gym exhausted, but the stomach rumbling gets embarrassing and I can also get a little dizzy from physical exertion without enough fuel.

In three different short trips to the track, in between weight machines, I did about 2 miles yesterday. That's still not very good, and I remember doing 3 miles (with a break at 1.5) more than once last year. However, since I am adding in weights and stairs, I am exhausting myself on multiple levels. So I'm trying not to get too down about it.

This song pushed me to make the final trip back to the track. I'm pretty sure I almost threw up when I was done. I was at the gym for like an hour and a half. Oh well, it was worth it.

The Jog of Shame

Ugh. In my last blog post it had been a week since I last jogged. This time it had only been six days (ONLY SIX DAYS? I'm still kicking myself) and I felt like I got worse. Maybe I didn't wait enough time again after eating. But yesterday I only jogged about .9 miles and I had to fight off strong waves of nausea when I finished. I was gasping for breath so hard on the last block that I wanted to stop. Now granted, it was a loop, and the first half was downhill, the second half uphill. But Mike and I have done this jog before with far fewer problems. I must've been tired, or had not eaten well. I don't know.

I was so upset when I got inside. It's official: college wants you to be unhealthy. I have been living the wake-up-go-to-class-do-homework-try-to-find-time-to-cook-go-to-bed routine for a couple weeks now. My dreams of jogging every other day are far from realized. I simply could not find the time until yesterday night around 9:30 PM to go out and jog for 10-15 minutes tops, and I almost threw up.

This quarter I'm taking 15 credits and working a part-time job. Next quarter I'll only be taking 11 credits with the same job, and in Spring only 10 with the job. So I'm in the roughest times of my senior year right now. My goal might suffer a little this quarter. But the thing about it is, this is a hobby for me. No, it's not the kind of hobby where I obsess over it and nothing else. It's also not the kind of hobby that I want to drop, leave behind, forget about. I'm frustrated that I can't find or make the time to do this as often as I'd like. But I will have more time in a couple of months. And I'm just going to have to live with that for now.

Even if I was jogging every other day, I don't think it's realistic to update constantly. I mentioned that in my last blog. I think 1-2 blogs a week is appropriate for what I'm blogging about.

I don't know when I'm going to get out jogging again. Next week is looking like a lighter week than I've had all quarter, so hopefully I can get some good time in then. Mike and I have been consuming produce at a much higher rate than before, which I feel good about, and it helps my peace of mind that if I can't exercise as much as I want, at least I can eat pretty well. RIDICULOUSLY well for a college student, at least, even on a pretty low budget. We're working on buying more in bulk, less packaged foods... other little cost-saving tips. I wish I could be a Coupon Queen who saves 80% every time she goes grocery shopping, buuuut I'm not.

I have no idea how to end this blog. Honestly, it's a Friday night and I'm exhausted. So: the end.

Oh right, I have a blog.

Oops. Hi there! I actually got up this morning earlier than I needed to. I don't think you understand the monumental status of such an event. THIS NEVER HAPPENS. And I had a good reason for it. I haven't jogged since last Friday.

Yes, I jogged a few times after my last blog post, but I figured that if I posted EVERY TIME I JOGGED you would get sick of me and I would run out of things to say. (Did you catch the pun there? Run out? I'm so clever.) Then Week 4 of school happened and I have been buried in mounds of deadlines since then, especially since my campus job recently started. I finally got a light homework evening last night, and naturally all I wanted to do was cook, bake and watch TV. All of those were very good ideas. (I made acorn squash stuffed with quinoa, hominy and bell pepper, topped with nutritional yeast--AMAZING--and then blondies--you know, brownies without chocolate?--with dried cranberries and flax seeds. My taste buds were writing me love letters.)

So this morning I don't have class until 11:30, but I woke up at 9:30 to go for a run. I can definitely tell that I haven't run in a week, which is why I insisted on going today. I felt like if I waited any longer I'd be back at square one. I only ran for about 15 minutes before I had to stop, but then after walking for 5 minutes or so I pushed it and jogged two blocks uphill before walking home. Morning air definitely has a terrible feeling in my lungs--oh yes, it's the cheese grater effect back for more. Blaaah. I tried to breathe in through my nose, as some had suggested, but I think that will work better when I get back to the condition I was in last week. This week I was so winded that nose breathing just was not delivering the oxygen fast enough.

Anyway, I still need to squeeze in a shower before class, but I just wanted to say hi and, you know, I haven't forgotten about you.

Cramping My Style

After a day's break, Mike and I decided to try for a run yesterday. We were busy cleaning the house and grocery shopping, among other things, so we wanted to fit a run into a specific time slot. The time slot happened to be very soon after I had stuffed myself with a cheap cheese pizza. I figured maybe I would get a gross sloshy feeling from the food bouncing around in my stomach, but nothing major.

Well, five minutes in I got a twinge in my lower abdomen on the left side. Three seconds later it escalated to one of those pains that translates as "If you don't stop running now, you're just going to fall over." I walked it off for a few minutes but it came back after another minute of jogging. Again and again and again.We only had this small time slot in which to run, and my digestive system was not having any of it. My legs were fine--in fact, they were itching to run. My lungs had no complaints. It was just this one little part of my intestine that said, "Oh no you don't, missy; you slow down to a boring walk. No elevated heart rate for you!"

So we made it just a bit into the north end of the arboretum, exited to campus, and went back home through campus. A total of about 7 minutes of running. That would have been okay if we had been going up those killer hills, but no, it was flat. I wanted to run again later, but between cleaning and dinner and company, it didn't happen.

What I did accomplish, though, is taking pictures of my laughably bad shoes! 

Skechers--it's teh suck.

I bought these years and years ago, probably for high school gym class. I never wore them outside, because running shoes have never been part of my "personal style." I like how they look only when paired with other designated exercise attire. So these are still in good shape; however, I'm pretty sure they're mostly for show. I will say they have a good bounce in the sole, but the primary fabric is this strange meshy material that provides very little support. The ankle thing in the back there rubs up against my skin all the time. And the plastic details around the lace holes are just for show. I'm pretty sure no one goes out shopping for running shoes and comes home with Skechers.

Nice bulbous heel. Wut?

Buuuuut like most things at the moment, being a college student, it's not really in my budget to go get a gait analysis and custom fit shoes. Plus, it would be advisable for me to keep running for say, a few months, to make sure I'm actually going to stick with this. I don't want to be like the people that buy ice skates, use them once, and then stick them in the back of the closet, passing them on to their children 30 years later. If I buy running shoes, or anything else that's an investment, I want to get a good return. Which brings me to my leg pictures. I don't think I can fairly call them "before" pictures anymore, so I'll just call them "early on" pictures.

Any muscles you see here are already an improvement.

 

 

So I've got these new thigh muscles. Those are the ones that felt like they were going to burst through my skin while jogging the hills, remember? Yeah. And my calves were previously about the thickness of a normal person's arms. They've already gotten a bit better too. Oh, and note what I call the awesome tiger tan on my feet. That would be from my sweet cage sandals. I usually don't like trends in fashion very much, buuuut those I dig.

I think I spy a little bit of tone in those calves... WIN!

I'm about to go on a really long jog. I've run into (no pun intended!) some very frustrating situations today, and I'm not satisfied from the crampy run we did yesterday, so it's on today. No mercy. There will be a blog about it. I'll see you there.