Love Hurts

 I am in so much pain. Who know a little jogging would use so many muscles?

Yesterday after work I headed over to the indoor walking trail at the local college. The Endomondo training schedule wanted me to go 1.5 miles in 25 minutes. During that time, I had to jog for eight 1-minute intervals, with one minute of walking between each interval. I only got .92 miles in that time, so clearly I was slow. But I'm proud to say that I did jog through EVERY interval I was supposed to!
 

 Okay, I'll admit that by the eighth interval what I was doing only barely qualified as walking. More of a Frankenstein's creature shuffle. It was definitely more than walking though.

I'm also proud of myself because there was someone else at the walking track: a fit college student. She looked like a softball player. She was jogging around the trail, too, lapping me every 3 seconds. I was almost too embarrassed to try to jog. I didn't want her to see all my jiggle while I made what I knew would be a slow attempt. But then I realized that she was probably too focused on her own workout to really notice me. And even if she did notice me, why should I care? I don't know her. I'll probably never see her again. So I did it. I jogged in front of a stranger. 

And my little jogs finally put me into vigorous exercise for once!! Thirteen minutes of awesomeness!!!

I'm paying for it today, though. Everything hurts. My legs, my abs, my sides, my back--even my shoulders hurt. What's that about? But even with the pain, I feel good. I feel like I made some progress. I loved to run when I was a kid. I always planned on being on the track team in high school. But before high school, I got boobs. So...I stopped. I stopped doing anything that might make them move or call attention to them, and that included running. I've missed it.

 So I'm looking forward to doing it again on Friday, even though I am still so sore. I'm going to put my heart in it, even though right now my top speed is slug.

1307.51 / .92 / 1281.3

It's That Time Again

It's that time of the month. As a friend of mine says, I'm on my moon. This is usually when any health plans go out the window. My cravings, my husband's cravings (he has a sympathetic cycle), the general feeling of malaise all conspire to make me want to eat Cheetos and pizza while wrapped in a blanket watching Netflix.

This time I have a plan though. Every time I am tempted to send Michael out for Cheetos (we don't keep them in the house; I'm not crazy), I'm going to take a bath instead. A hot bath eases the physical symptoms, and the candles and music comfort me instead of food. If the bath doesn't work, I'm going to paint my nails. You just can't eat Cheetos with wet nails.

I will modify my yoga the next few days to avoid any upside down poses. Normally, I would wimp out of yoga or walking entirely, but I'm not going to let myself do that this time.

I went to the gym yesterday after work, but all the treadmills were in use. I killed some time using the weight machines, but 30 minutes later they were still no free ones, so I went home. The time change means that it's dark when I get off work now, so no walking outside other than on the weekends.

I'm using the Endomondo 5k training program to learn how to jog. Today is one of the interval days. I was concerned with how to do this on the treadmill, since my walking speed and jogging (if you can call it that) speed are different. I didn't want to be constantly hitting buttons on the treadmill. Then I remembered that the local college has an indoor walking track. I will be heading there after work. It's just a concrete balcony around the basketball court, but it's dry (raining again), warm (cold rain), and there are security cameras in case someone tries to kill me (trust no one).

My husband has a part in our community theater's winter play, so he has been at rehearsals most evenings. This is giving me and Tori time to catch up on some Netflixing. We are working our way through Gilmore Girls. Tori believes she is most like Rory, and I am most like Miss Patty, the dance teacher. So I have some girl time to look forward to after my walk/jog tonight!

1307.51 / 0 / 1282.22