Over the Parking Lot and Through the Woods, To Muscle Soreness We Go!

This past Saturday, Danny and I were on a time crunch. He got home around 4:00 and had to leave again at 5:00, but we needed to run! Tuesday and Saturday are the only days we can really get together to do that. So Danny suggested we head up to the arboretum but a short but intense trail workout with hills. I definitely have my days where running is unusually difficult, and this was one of those days. My legs were burning 100 yards into the first hill. Hills are bad, mmkay? And if I didn't have Danny's tiger spirit (yeah, he was actually dressed as a tiger, with face paint and a tail and all) I would have wussed out on myself. As it was I had to walk for a bit... but it was my first time out on any extended hills in months. I think with weekly training that will get much easier, and I will get much more buff, and the runners' legs will be mine. Oh yes, they will be mine.

I have heard and am inclined to believe that if you don't cross train you will never get ANYWHERE. Running at a consistent pace around a flat track for 6 months didn't really get me anywhere, as Mike and I gave up on the hills pretty early on, and then it was fall/winter/cold/gross/snowy/AUGH. I actually ran better when I started out than I had been prior to roommate running. Now I am going to focus on varying my runs, so that most Saturdays Danny and I will do hills, Tuesdays will be for the nearly 5 mile loop, and Thursdays I run on my own so I think I will do interval training (short sprints with walking in between).

The positive spin on the muscle-destroying hills of the arboretum was that the entire second half of the run (when we turned around and got to go downhill) was perfect. I was in that "casual run" mode where I was not at all out of breath. It was really comfortable, actually. And yesterday we went back to the nearly 5 mile loop and I held up okay. We also popped into Creativitea, where we're going to make roommate shot glasses together! Roommate running and roommate drinking go hand in hand, apparently. Along with roommate spandex. Shmexy.

Anyway, Bellingham Bay is an absolutely GORGEOUS view to run next to, and the chilling wind felt amazing when contrasted with the almost-too-hot sun. What's funny is that while I am an over-70-degrees-loving solar powered lightophile (there's gotta be a fancier Latin word for that...), running seems to be best at like 50-55 degrees, slightly overcast. I can go out in shorts and a tank top for a 5 mile run when it's 50 degrees, cloudy, even maybe a slight drizzle... but same weather not running requires my largest ugliest coat and a grim expression. (P.S. Lucy means "light"--Lucifer means "light bringer," haha--so that may explain the love of the sun!)

Speaking of weather, it's currently dumping in a typical Bellingham fashion, and I'm watching it unenthusiastically from the library window, hoping those thundershowers predicted for tomorrow don't come to fruition. DON'T FRUIT, PLEASE DON'T FRUIT!

When the rain beats against my windowpane

It's fall. It's definitely fall. It's rainy and somewhat cold, though not quite the kind of cold where you can haul out your winter coat. It's still too cold to go out without any coat though, and just barely warm enough you can get away with a good sweatshirt. It's definitely cold in the mornings and at night, and that's when I tend to run.

We're all well aware that I don't have high-tech running gear. I have Skechers shoes from Marshall's and cotton shorts and useless sports bras. I don't have any fancy moisture-wicking temperature-regulating fuse-with-your-skin-and-make-you-aerodynamic running gear. And I hear that's what you need in the winter. Well, not need necessarily so much as strongly desire. Staying in shorts works for awhile because the body gets quite warm running. But somewhere around 45 or below that stops being an option. So then you break out the sweatshirt and sweatpants, and your body heats up like normal, and now your face is frozen and you're sweating through your clothes and the sweat is reaching the outside temperature and then pressing back up against your skin. So you're freezing and sticky and uncomfortable. Is that the sort of thing you roll out of bed in the morning looking forward to? Well I don't.

So I've decided to move my jogging indoors for the season. We have an indoor track at Western that is open during the general hours I tend to run, and its made of that nice cushy track material that's so much better for your joints than concrete. But the scenery sucks (a basketball court below; how marvelous...) and it's SO SHORT. It takes 10.5 laps on that thing to make a mile. The brain protests that sort of thing.

"Lucy," it says, "you've gone around this track four or five times. That's over a mile. You're tired. STOP!"

"No, brain," I say, "it's only been half a mile. Quit being such a wuss."

"Are you sure," my legs inquire, slowing down and growing heavy.

"It has.... to have been..... longerthanthat," sputter my lungs.

"Dammit." I'm suddenly exhausted. "You win."

So, there's that to contend with. But the other good thing about the gym is access to weight machines! I like being able to diversify what muscles I work. I love stairs and stair climbers. I went to the gym frequently in the spring and one of my goals then was to work up my arms and chest a bit and try to do a push-up.

That's been another goal of mine. A friend told me about the One Hundred Pushups challenge and I'm intrigued. I haven't decided whether to pursue that or not. If I do it, I want to really do it, holding myself accountable. One of the reasons I didn't do the Couch to 5K plan (aside from that I didn't hear of it until about a month into my running) is that I'm scared to apply myself to something that requires routine, when as a college student on any given day I might have to sacrifice a few things I'd planned to do in favor of homework, or sleep. I don't think I'm ready to take that on yet. Maybe in winter quarter, when I'll be taking fewer credits, I'll commit to something like that.

In summation (as though this was some big classroom speech) I haven't stopped running, but I've moved it indoors. It's a little easier to keep track of my distance progress that way, since I know exactly how long the track is, how many laps in a mile, etc. I think it'll work out well. I've made it this far.

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.