Face The Music Friday #19

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Shoulder/Leg – all 3 sets of 12-15

Machine Shoulder Press – 20 lb, Barbell Incline Shoulder Raise – 20 lb, Dumbbell Shoulder Shrug – 25 lb, Barbell Squat – 75 lb, Barbell Standing Calf Raise – 75 lb, Farmer’s Walk (50 steps) – 40 lb, Abductor – 160 lb, Adductor – 160 lb

Sunday – Run/Walk 38 min

Monday – Chest/Tricep – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 30 min Yoga

Dumbbell bench press – 20lb, Machine Fly – 70 lb, Dumbbell decline bench press – 15lb, Push-ups – 10, 10, 8 (no knees), Cable rope pushdown – 25 lb, “The Monster” – 20 lb, Machine assisted dip – 100 lb

Tuesday – Run/Walk 35 min & 1 hr Ultimate Conditioning Class @ Unleashed

Wednesday – Unscheduled rest day – tweaked my ankle doing box jumps Tues night

Thursday – 37 min run/walk & 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed

Friday – rest

______________________________________________________________________________

Sooooo many burpees this week.

 

 

Here’s the deal: every week Julia and I go to Unleashed for our obstacle training class on Thursday nights. We have done this for the last month. Whenever we go, this Ultimate Conditioning class is going on before our class that Kevin also teaches and he’s always telling us how great it is for prepping you to become stronger to tackle the obstacle courses.

Now, when I bought my class card for Unleashed, I did so with the intention of only going to practice my obstacles. I already have my PF membership so I continue going there for my regular workouts and wanted to use this as my “specialty” gym to conserve classes. Julia, though, is always saying how she wants to try other classes they have there. We were talking about it after class last week and Kevin said “don’t worry, I’ll make sure she comes with you” and goes behind the counter. He comes back out and hands us each a free class card, just to ensure that I would come to one of the Ultimate Conditioning class with Julia. Evil.

 

 

We decided we’d go to the Tuesday night class (since we can’t get out of work until 6 and these classes start at 6:30). It was a SCORCHER. I was dying. Julia was dying. Her cousin Paola (who is also going to be on our Mudder team) was dying. It was insane. I think we used almost everything in that gym. We used the TRX, battle ropes, sleds, etc and did a ridiculous amount of burpees. He also had us do box jumps (which I’ve never done). I had a lot of trouble with them because they felt a little high to me and I was having trouble jumping both feet up at the same time. Well, lo and behold, I found a way to injure myself just by jumping. I went up with both feet and jammed (for lack of a better term) the sole of my foot at an odd angle against the edge of the box. Let’s just say I didn’t do any more jumps (I switched it up to just stepping up and down when it was my turn in the rotation). It hurt pretty bad on Wednesday so I took the day off and it seems to be almost back to normal so the rest of my routine Thursday was the same as always.

Kevin is doing some ridiculous crazy 8 hr obstacle course in Vermont this weekend, so when we went for obstacle class last night Janine was teaching it. Oh, and she likes burpees even more than Kevin!! We must have done a total of probably 5-7 minutes of burpees in either 30 second, 1 minute or 2 minute segments. Did I mention I hate them? So yeah…my shoulders are killing me this morning. It could also be the fact that we did THREE rounds of the obstacles last night (including monkey bars) and the fact that her idea of the first movement in a warm-up is to inchworm all the way down the turf! All. The. Way.

 

 

 

I’m really excited that it is FINALLY Friday. We’re staying up in MA this weekend at Julie and Dan’s house. This will be Tara’s birthday weekend. Bank of America does a thing the first weekend of every month that you show your debit card and you get free museum admission. One of the museums on the list is the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. We’ll take the T into the city, hit up the museum and then we’re going to use Yelp to find a place to have lunch…maybe even do a little bakery hopping or something. We’ll see where the day takes us!

My inspiration for the song this week comes from our class last night. Just as we were near the end of our last cycle of obstacles, this song came on and totally pumped me up to just finish when I was ready to pretty much lay down on the floor and make everyone else just jump over me. Thank you, Macklemore.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Can’t Hold Us

 

 

 

 

 

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Happy Birthday, Tara!

My sweetheart is 29 today! Woo hoo!

She is the most amazing, caring, smart, beautiful, funny, selfless person I know and I’m lucky that she chose me to spend her life with. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel!

We’ve had so much fun on our adventure dates over the last year and I’m looking forward to many more this year and in the years to come. I can’t wait to laugh with her as she climbs each and every boulder we come across in the forest. I can’t wait to glide alongside her while we kayak in silence across the bay.

I hope you have an amazing birthday! I love you! Maybe I’ll even play a board game with you…

Face The Music Friday #18

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Shoulder/Leg – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 3 mile run for Meg’s Miles

Machine Shoulder Press – 15 lb, Barbell Incline Shoulder Raise – 20 lb, Dumbbell Shoulder Shrug – 25 lb, Barbell Squat – 75 lb, Barbell Standing Calf Raise – 75 lb, Farmer’s Walk (50 steps) – 40 lb, Abductor – 150 lb, Adductor – 150 lb

Sunday – Extra rest day (doubled up workouts on Saturday)

Monday – Chest/Tricep – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 15 min Yoga

Dumbbell bench press – 15lb, Machine Fly – 70 lb, Dumbbell decline bench press – 15lb, Push-ups – 10, 8, 5 (no knees), Cable rope pushdown – 25 lb, “The Monster” – 20 lb, Machine assisted dip – 100 lb

Tuesday – Run/Walk 35 min

Wednesday – Shoveled snow for over an hour

Thursday – 35 min run/walk, 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed

Friday – rest

Another great week! I missed my workouts on Wednesday due to the snow we got (I think maybe 8 inches). I had to shovel everything out myself in the morning before work because poor Tara was up sick most of the night, then I shoveled some more when I got home to clean up what the plows had snuck back in. After all that business I didn’t feel like weights or yoga so I counted that as a workout. A well deserved title, if you ask me!

 

 

Not a whole lot going on this week other than my awesome chiropractor appointment. I am having a hard time typing today because of my obstacle class last night. It was a doozy and I was sweating buckets. Considering that when we first walked in the gym I had to keep my jacket on because it was so cold in there, I’d say I worked pretty hard.

The gym was fairly empty when I got there around 6:15. There was the normal kettlebell class going on, plus the Ultimate Conditioning class that’s always right before ours. Normally by this time, people start filtering in for the OCF class but I was the only one other than a guy who was already there before me. Then my coworker/teammate got there, plus one other girl. After Ultimate Conditioning ended and a few of them joined us, there ended up being a total of 6 people in the class – pretty low (typically we’ve had around a dozen on a Thursday night).

Since we had so few people, he mixed it up a bit on us. Kevin normally sets up stations for however many people are there and we just rotate through them for the hour long class. Last night, he set up kind of a mini obstacle course. He laid the plyoboxes and steps out in a jagged line so we hopped from one to the next across the gym this time. At the end of the plyoboxes was a TRX station that we needed to climb across on the monkey bars and then work our way back and back across the plyoboxes. After that was sled #1 that we pulled one way and pushed the other (instead of high push one way, low push the other) and then sled #2 that we pulled with the rope. Small walls were next, followed by large wall with rope then monkey bars.

We cycled through them once for about 2 minutes per station, then we cycled through a second time for about a minute per station and then we started doing what I like to refer to as “hell”. He had us all come over to the turf in the middle and start doing burpees, then one at a time he sent us through each obstacle rapid cycle (you did the first, moved right into the second and continued on). When person #1 got to the end of obstacle #1, he sent person #2. Unfortunately, we were the last two so we did a good amount of burpees waiting our turn to go! Once we’d all gone around once, he had us do it a second time. On these quick fire rounds, since I can’t do the walls, he had us attempt them, but then Spartan roll under the first two and military crawl under the last one (which I kind of enjoyed LOL).

So after all that torture, we’re done right? It’s time to cool down and stretch? Nope. How about you all take a 45 lb bumper plate, hold it straight up over your head and walk a lap around the gym. Sounds great. Oh wait, there’s more? Yes – let’s do 3 more minutes of burpees! Holy hell!! After that we finally got to stretch and call it a night. What a hell of a workout!

 

 

I am proud to say, however, that I’m SO close to conquering the first (6 ft) wall. I got even higher last night than I have before and even so close that I could have done the leg swing to get up and over, but I didn’t have that “oomph” to push my leg off the wall and upwards. I also figured out how I hurt my shoulder last week (and again last night) – the monkey bars. I can’t hang very well, so monkey bars are another weakness of mine, but when I attempted them for the first time last week, I think the weight of my body on a dead hang from one shoulder trying to swing to the next bar was too much. I improvised and just hung there to build up my grip strength and Kevin had me practice trying to flex just a little bit so not all of my weight is just on my shoulders, so I’ll keep practicing that.

For today’s little ditty to end my post, I chose one I just heard in the gym for the first time like two weeks ago. I normally have my headphones in at all times working out so I block out the same ol’ same ol’ that Planet Fitness plays over and over. However, they have TVs and speakers in the locker room as well, so when I took out my headphones this song was playing and I thought it was incredibly catchy so I came home and downloaded it. I have no idea when it came out, but it’s definitely a new favorite for me! Just try not to tap your toe…

Janelle Monae – Tightrope

 

 

 

 

 

Chiropractic Wonder

OK, so this is gonna be a very wordy, less picture-y type of post. If you need to be bored to sleep, or perhaps have nothing better to do, please, keep reading.

Yesterday, I had my first appointment with a sports chiropractor. I chose the Chiropractic Performance Center  initially because I was impressed with their website. I know that sounds silly, but I feel like if they take the time to let people do research online by keeping an up-to-date website, that’s a big thing for me. I hate calling around to places for information. When they have all their info front and center online I view that as a big plus.

I was able to see that they took my insurance, had hours that would work for me without having to take any time out of work and they did the trifecta of treatments that people have recommended to me (ART, Graston and Kinesio Taping – which I’ve tried to do myself before). I was sold, so I made an appointment and was able to get in just over a week from the day I called.

I was a little nervous getting there because her office is in Providence and while it’s not a big city, it’s still a city nonetheless and I am not a city driving girl. Luckily, it was fairly close to the highway and traffic wasn’t bad since it was still early in the rush hour. I even got there about 15 minutes early.

Upon entering the office, I immediately thought of how cozy it was. It was a smaller office and it had a warm atmosphere, nice rugs and comfy leather chairs to wait in. I checked in and chit chatted with the receptionist, who is super nice. I ran down the hall to change out of work clothes into something I could move in better and before I knew it the doc finished up her first appointment and came down to get me.

We went back into another very cozy room with some nice classical music playing on her computer. She took some basic info about why I was there and what I was looking for. Besides the obvious running injuries I wanted help with, I also filled her in on my back problems. You see, there is a (not so) funny story there that I don’t think I’ve ever really touched on, on the blog.

Back probably 10-11 years ago, I was renting a small house by myself. The very first morning I woke up there, I had stepped out on to my little porch early in the morning before work for some reason. I can’t remember why at this point in time, but I was only in my pajamas and bare feet. Little did I know, when I went outside and shut the door behind me it was locked. I panicked because I didn’t know my neighbors and didn’t want to knock on some stranger’s door at like 6:00am. I walked around the outside of the house and noticed my landlord had a ladder lying next to the shed in the backyard. Did I mention it was summer? That meant I had just put my air conditioner in my kitchen window (it was a tiny house – it was the only window that worked). I had the bright idea to climb up the ladder, pop the A/C unit out and climb in that way. Well…it was a heavy A/C and I was on a ladder. In bare feet. And not very strong. Long story short, I did something to my back carrying it down the ladder and never went to a doctor for it. I’ve had issues with it ever since, particularly if you push in just the right spot.

To get back to my visit – after typing up some notes about my history, she started the physical exams. Stand up straight, bend this way, bend that way…then she measured my feet, which I thought was really weird and funny. I wear a size 8 shoe. However, she said that there is no way I should be. She said I had narrow feet, but not only that, when I put my shoe back on for her to check, she told me that I didn’t have enough room in front of my toes for my foot to flatten out while moving. She said my arches were super tight and that the bone on the side of my foot shouldn’t stick out the way it does (which I’ve had pain with before but no one ever figured that out). She said I should probably get a FULL size bigger, but in narrow width and then they wouldn’t slip off my heels (which is always a problem I have when trying on shoes). Now I’ll have to order online because the only running store in my state doesn’t carry narrow width shoes. Major bummer!

After the discussion about shoes, we went back to more exams and various stretching/flexibility measurements, this time lying on the table. She could definitely pinpoint the spot of my back that hurt. On one other little tangent, I should tell you I also see a rheumatologist. I’ve been going to her for a couple of years now. My NP sent me because of all the general aches and pains I constantly have thinking maybe fibromyalgia or arthritis or some silly business like that. When I initially met with her, she did some blood labs to check for various things as well as a physical exam. She didn’t think I have fibro but the labs came back with a positive test for Lyme disease. Now, I had no idea when I had been bitten by a tick and never noticed any target bite or anything so we had no clue when I could have gotten it (but my NP says lab work done previously never indicated it in their office). She erred on the side of caution and prescribed me a course of antibiotics for a month which is how I guess they typically would treat it after an initial bite. The chiro did ask if she ever did any follow-up testing on it (which she didn’t) and wondered why she never did any X-rays. The rheumatologist pretty much diagnosed me with “chronic myofascial pain”. On a side note before moving on with my story, since I’ve been more active the last few years it’s gotten better, but I still deal with basically daily pain.

The chiropractor said it’s partially posture (which I figured) but then she also ordered X-rays of my back so she could make sure there wasn’t anything else going on before she figures out a plan of action in terms of adjustments and whatnot. Basically, she seemed to describe my body to me as this (in my own words): the parts of me that should be stable aren’t and the parts that should move well don’t. She said they’re kind of opposite almost. She also told me to stop all the PT exercises I had been doing, especially bridges, because of my back. She has an in house CES that she said will work with me as well on what I should be doing that will incorporate everything going on instead of just focusing on one injury at at time (like just my hip, or just my IT band).

Overall, I’m very pleased with my choice of chiros. She listened to my long boring ramble, took plenty of notes (both of which are important to me) and then I felt like she was very thorough in her exam. I’m looking forward to going back and seeing the results of the Xray and finding out my plan of attack. It’ll be expensive, but maybe I can finally start moving in a pain-free direction!

 

 

 

For Meg

I’m sure a lot of my fellow runners heard about the #megsmiles movement in honor of Meg Cross Menzies, who was struck and killed by a drunk driver on her morning run on the 13th. When I heard about it earlier this week, I knew I absolutely had to contribute and so I rearranged my schedule a bit.

 

We were behind this car this morning, before my workout – so perfect.

 

Today is a shoulder and leg strength day, not running. What did I do about? I did a double – I did my strength workout at the gym, came home, changed into my running gear and headed out for a run.

 

 

I followed the plan I would have tomorrow on my schedule (run 3 min/walk 2 min x 7) and ended up running a 5K by pure coincidence (when you include my 5 minute warm-up and cool down walk).

 

 

It’s a cold and dreary day here today, with a rain/snow mix all day. What a perfect time to try out some new gear.

 

 

I will never take for granted what I’m able to do. The pain may suck sometimes, but it just lets you know you’re alive.

 

 

R.I.P. Meg.

 

 

 

Face The Music Friday #17

Fitness this week:

Saturday – Shoulder/Leg – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 30 min Yoga

Machine Shoulder Press – 15 lb, Barbell Incline Shoulder Raise – 20 lb, Dumbbell Shoulder Shrug – 25 lb, Barbell Squat – 65 lb, Barbell Standing Calf Raise – 65 lb, Farmer’s Walk (50 steps) – 40 lb, Abductor – 150 lb, Adductor – 150 lb, Plank – 3 x 45 seconds

Sunday – Resolution 5K race & PT stretches

Monday – Chest/Tricep – all 3 sets of 12-15

Dumbbell bench press – 15lb, Machine Fly – 65 lb, Dumbbell decline bench press – 15lb, Push-ups – 8, 7, 5 (no knees), Cable rope pushdown – 25 lb, “The Monster” – 20 lb, Machine assisted dip – 100 lb

Tuesday – Unscheduled rest day – not feeling well

Wednesday – Back/Bicep – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 15 min Yoga

Machine assisted pull-up – 140 lb, “Good Mornings” – 30 lb, Cable seated row – 45 lb, Flexed Bicep Curl – 20 lb, Dumbbell Incline Bench Curl – 17.5 lb, Cable Standing One Arm Bicep Curl – 10 lb

Thursday – 35 min run/walk, 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed

Friday – rest

 

Or a blog in this case…

 

I call that a decent week! Kept up with my walk/run plan and it has moved up to 2 min run/2 min walk and I believe it will change again on Saturday. My plan for that day is to combine Saturday and Sunday’s workouts so that I can get in some #megsmiles on Saturday since that’s not a current normal running day on my schedule right now. I’ll then take Sunday as an extra rest day and just enjoy watching my Patriots play and maybe get some stuff done around the house.

Last night I had my third obstacle class at Unleashed and it was a doozy! I worked up a huge sweat and loved every minute of it. I love that each time I’ve done the class it’s a little different. The first time I think we had 11 obstacles, then last Thursday was 12 and last night was 13! And our warm-up was just running laps around the gym this time – no burpees! Yay!!

 

 

I think I did pretty well last night, at least with the wall. This time, I got high enough to see over it, but still can’t quite get my leg up over the top. I don’t have enough confidence or strength for that yet. At least it felt good to notice that progress as before I was just staring at the wood. I also climbed a bit higher on the rope ladder and cargo net, but until my grip strengthens some more I’m not comfortable going higher without a pad beneath me (and neither of those things has one under it).

As good as that felt, my left shoulder is definitely NOT feeling well today. It stiffened up a bit last night before bed, but I took some ibuprofen and figured rest might help but it feels worse this morning. I tried reaching higher to climb instead of closer to my body and I think I tweaked something by doing that, especially since it’s my left   shoulder that hurts which is my weaker side.

Last night, this is how the obstacles went (from where I started in the rotation): Rope wall climb (this is a 12 ft wall), the monkey rope (as I call it), Muscle up on Rings (go to around 6:30 in video), Kettlebell hoist, Cargo net climb, Rope ladder climb, Pull-ups (or in my case, hang from the bar for like 5 seconds at a time), Sandbag carry over plyoboxes, Sled push, Weight bag drag and pull, Sled pull and then my nemesis, the 6 ft wall. There is also an 8 ft wall that is part of that rotation with the 6 ft wall that if you get over one, you do the next, but please…I’m still working on the 6 ft wall.

Before we get to my musical selection for this week, here’s a quick registered race update for my #14in2014:

Race 1 done – Resolution 5K

Race 2 – Old Fashioned 5K – 2/16

Race 3 – St. Pat’s 5K – 3/8

Race 4 – Cox Rhode Races – 5/3

Race 5 – Goal race #1 – Tough Mudder – 5/31

Race 6 – Goal race #2 – Surftown Half Marathon – 9/14

This week I’m sharing a song that gets me pumped up whenever I hear it…even if I’m not working out.

Radioactive – Imagine Dragons

 

It’s Really Happening

It’s official! I’m terrified but excited. My stomach did cartwheels for about 20 minutes after I finally registered yesterday. We are Team Mixed Nuts.

Wish me luck in surviving it!  😀

 

 

 

 

Race Recap: Resolution 5K Beach & Trail Race

Today I ran my first ever beach/trail race – the Resolution 5K Beach & Trail Race. To say it was a true test of my fitness would be an understatement. Not only have I not run regularly for probably 2 months due to injuries (outside of a couple of seasonal races), but I’ve never run in that type of environment. I’ve definitely lost a lot of my breathing fitness/endurance. It was an absolute ego check!

 

 

This was also the smallest 5K I’ve ever participated in. I don’t know how many runners there were this year, but I looked at the results from last year and there was somewhere around only 130 runners. It definitely felt that small, too.

It was a gorgeous, sunny winter day in Narragansett, RI. The race was to be held at Scarborough State Beach and then we ran through the trails around the Black Point Fishing Area. Let’s remember though, regardless of the sun, that it’s January in Rhode Island. It was a super windy, very chilly day. The wind shows 11mph, but I’m pretty sure there were gusts close to 20mph at times. I got pushed back a time or two when we were running into the wind.

 

 

The start time was 10am. I think we got there around 9:15am. I wanted to make sure I had enough time to register because this was literally a last minute decision for me. I didn’t pre-register (as I have for every other race I’ve ever run) but figured at $15 for on-site registration it wasn’t a bad price to pay to be able to decide the night before. Even as I was watching the Patriots destroy the Colts I wasn’t sure I still wanted to do it, but I packed all my stuff up the night before anyway.

We timed it perfectly because we got there just before the larger groups of people arrived and started lining up for their bibs. I was signed up, bibbed and on the way to the porta-pottie in 5 minutes. They seemed to be really organized for a smaller race. I told Tara after the race that it felt a bit like we were crashing a family reunion. Everyone there seemed to know everybody else and we didn’t know anybody!

I got my stretching done about 15 min prior to the start and then 10:00 came and I was curious why we weren’t even lining up on the beach yet. Then a man with a megaphone ended up telling us to follow him and we went down on the beach finally. We had to do a straight run down the beach to the rocks on one end, turn around and come back down the beach past the start, keep going up through the trail to the main road (maybe 100 yards of blessed pavement!!) and then back through the trail until we reached the end and ran back along the beach back to the start/finish.

 

 

It was a little difficult being at the back of the pack with not too many people around trying to figure out where to go. I had to pay careful attention to the little orange flags they had planted in the beach and trail. It was enough, though, that I didn’t get lost. Once we got to the trail, it was a muddy nightmare. It had poured here all day yesterday and had been rainy on and off on Friday as well. You could definitely tell it had rained recently because we had to run through ankle deep puddles that went the entire span across the trail in some areas. Who knew we had signed up for a mud run?!? Luckily, I had worn my brand spanking new trail shoes and they worked wonders on keeping me stable in the mud. No sliding around and great grip on these puppies!

 

 

Let me tell you, my feet were awfully cold and wet for about the last 1.5 miles. Not good times, but the shoes definitely helped. They didn’t seem to retain the water and make my feet really heavy which I appreciated, because my legs already felt like lead.

Trail running is definitely not easy as you have to be hyperaware of where you’re stepping. We had the same issue on the beach too, because it was littered with rocks throughout the majority of it.

 

This is only a small sampling of all the rocks!

 

I had to do a walk/run approach to the race, so it definitely took me longer to finish than normal road racing. I don’t know my “official” time (if there is one – no chips), but my Garmin came in at 44:23. Not terrible considering that I did a good amount of walking…more than I had wanted to unfortunately.

 

 

I’m proud of myself for going WAY out of my comfort zone. I did something I’ve never done, with a risk of coming in dead last due to the lack of people, and I did it in possibly one of the worst months to run a race in New England. Race 1 of my #14in2014 is on the books!

 

 

 

 

Face The Music Friday #16

Let’s jump right into things, shall we?

Fitness this week:

Saturday – 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed

Sunday – 50 min treadmill (20 min running, 30 min walking in 5 min segments, before I came up with a plan)

Monday – Chest/Tricep – all 3 sets of 12-15

Dumbbell bench press – 15lb, Machine Fly – 65 lb, Dumbbell decline bench press – 15lb, Push-ups – 5, 5, 5 (no knees), Cable rope pushdown – 22.5 lb, “The Monster” – 20 lb (could only get 10, 8 and 7 reps but they have no smaller barbells there), Machine assisted dip – 100 lb

Tuesday – 45 min run/walk, PT stretches

Wednesday – Back/Bicep – all 3 sets of 12-15 plus 30 min Yoga

Machine assisted pull-up – 140 lb, “Good Mornings” – 20 lb, Cable seated row – 40 lb, Flexed Bicep Curl – 20 lb, Dumbbell Incline Bench Curl – 15 lb, Cable Standing One Arm Bicep Curl – 10 lb

Thursday – 31 min run/walk, 1 hr Obstacle Class @ Unleashed (we did a couple of new/varied obstacles last night that were kind of fun)

Friday – rest

I spent a lot of time creating a spreadsheet for myself (I love Excel/Open Office) with my workouts for the month (all the way through Tough Mudder on May 31). I also determined a running training plan for myself to get my endurance back and slowly come back from my injuries that just don’t seem to go away.

 

 

My plan on the running is to do a Couch to 10K plan (hence the run/walk above) and as soon as that is completed jump right into a half marathon training plan. It is timed PERFECTLY so that the week before the Mudder my long run will be 9 miles – almost the length of the Mudder. The only half marathon I’ve signed up for so far is in September (which will be my first ever), so I’ll probably end up repeating the half marathon plan closer to that race. That is, unless I find one I just have to do over the summer, then it can be bumped up I suppose.

I feel like the plans I found go at a slow enough pace for me not to increase mileage too quickly. I think my latest injury to the IT band occurred because the Hal Higdon plan I was using was just too fast for me. These two plans will sloooooowly get me back my endurance and then build up the mileage.

 

 

I also contacted a sports chiropractor yesterday about possibly seeing her to help with all my issues. I have always felt like my body was out of whack (seriously, I think one side is shorter than the other) but having two pretty painful injuries that PT helped but then came back, I want to make sure there isn’t more I could do. The office I found has hours that will work for me, PLUS she’s certified in all sorts of techniques I’m interested in possibly having done (Graston, Active Release, etc). She also earns bonus points because I sent them a couple of quick questions via the “contact us” form on their website and the doctor herself responded within 20-30 minutes, answered my questions and cc’d her receptionist to possibly get me scheduled. Efficiency at it’s finest!

It won’t be cheap, but I figure if I could possibly go once a month it could still benefit me. I can ask for tools that I may not have for in between visits. My co-pay is kind of high, but now that Tara is on my insurances we’ll be saving money every month not paying for her plans out of pocket. Plus, as soon as we get our taxes done next month we can pay some stuff off or down significantly depending on what we get back.

Not much else going on for me this week. We were supposed to go snow tubing with Tara’s aunt and her two little cousins tomorrow, but it’s gonna bump all the way up to the 50’s (!!!) tomorrow and be pouring rain. Not ideal snow tubing conditions. We’ll probably move that to another weekend. It’s gonna stay in the 30-50 range for the next week or so too, so who knows when we’ll actually get out there.

 

 

I may do the Resolution 5K in Narragansett on Sunday, but haven’t decided. I think it will be a night before decision. That’s not a terrible thing, either. Pre-registration online was only $10, plus fees, but if you register day of it’s only $15! You also have to bring 2 items to donate from the list online.

For the song this week, this is one of my newer favorites I’ve been hearing a lot on WBRU. I love the sound of the ukelele or whatever it is – very folksy, but peppy and a nice addition to my workout playlist. Just an FYI – I don’t understand why – but the video has the two guys in the band cut in half singing the song in a field. Reallllly strange video, so you could just listen to it in the background and not watch the silliness.

twenty one pilots – House of Gold

 

My Pinky Toes Don’t Hurt

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Oh, and maybe my eyelids. I think I’m doing something wrong because I feel like I have a perpetual case of DOMS.

 

 

Since I went to the obstacle gym on Saturday morning, I’ve barely been able to move. I felt like I had done all 3 strength days combined for full body soreness. Sunday was the absolute worst day because that’s how my body usually works – the second day is the worst. Yesterday was a bit better when I woke up, but then I went to the gym for chest/tricep day and started my new strength routine. My, how things changed after that.

My friend Dan gave me a little exercise to throw in there for triceps called The Monster. I can’t find a video of exactly what it is online but basically it involves 3 exercises performed in succession as one rep: skull crusher, into a lying tricep extension right into a close grip bench press (excuse the horrible videos – I couldn’t really find what I wanted. Try not to laugh at “Buff Dudes”). The whole thing is done with an EZ Curl bar with the close grip the entire time. Once all 3 are done, that’s just one rep. Just one. Are you getting that? Just. One. Rep.

Today, my triceps are angry. Very angry. My chest also isn’t very pleased because in addition to switching up my Smith machine bench press to a flat bench dumbbell press, I also now do decline bench dumbbell presses. That’s a horse of a different color. Who knew they’d be so much more difficult?!?

So yeah…good times. But you know what, it feels awesome!!