Eugene Week 4 of 17: Dr. Who is gone but at least lifting heavy things still works.

This wasn't exactly the week I had planned. Not least of which because it was the last week of Dr. Who on Netflix, and WTF?? I have like three seasons left to watch before I catch up. I shell out $8 for that crap and now there is nothing left to watch except Jessica Jones. And Broadchurch. And The Fall. And reruns of X-Files and House. Shut up.

The week worked out okay, though once I found out Dr. Who is on Hulu and I can just give them my $8. Better than okay, actually.

We'd planned to be in Tahoe skiing with friends over the weekend, but said plans changed unexpectedly just a few days beforehand, which was just as well because it was around then that I started feeling a bit sick. I felt unusually tired on Wednesday, & by the time I got home I had a sore through & was also stuffed up and sniffly. It never got really bad, but pretty much all I did for the rest of the week was sleep, work from home, and get my workouts in.

In other news, I'm really enjoying getting back into proper strength work again, even though it's tough sometimes. I think I said this a few weeks ago, but MAN, it is a different world when you walk into the gym with an actual plan written by someone who knows what the hell they are doing than when you walk in going, "Eh, I'll just hang out for ~45:00 & do some deadlifts & push-ups & core & clamshells & whatnot & then hit the showers and call it good."

Now, don't get me wrong; I don't want to malign anyone's efforts at doing something instead of nothing when it comes to ye olde strengthe worke. I have certainly spent many years of my running life doing exactly that, and I really do believe it's far from useless. But two summers ago when I was hanging out with the SF Crossfit Triathlon group and last summer when I was working with AT and now these last four weeks doing the New Rules (ie, the poor woman's personal strength trainer), it is an entirely different experience when someone actually spells out for you what to do and there is an actual plan behind it.

For one, I've pretty much come to accept that it hurts. I mean, not in the "WOW-I-think-I-just-threw-my-back-out" kind of way, but definitely in the "Sweet-baby-Jesus-I-do-not-not-NOT-want-to-do-four-more-reps" kind of way. I can't sleepwalk my way through it and often find myself using the same mental tactics I use to get through speed workouts.

But, it freaking works. I have upper body muscles again and also abs (been a while since I've seen those! They actually kind of startled me when I first noticed them), and in terms of pounds of lean tissue and body fat percentage, I am definitely seeing numbers much closer to what I prefer. (To be honest, I'm more than a little surprised to see such big changes in just a few weeks. Though running consistently again also helps.)

(Look, I'm sorry there's no pictures. I just can't be one of those people with my phone out at the gym taking pictures of shit, and I am really trying to get through these workouts as quickly as possible. Please enjoy instead this picture of my post-long run beer in one of the beautiful "Buy a Lady a Drink" glasses my sister got us for Christmas, which provides clean water access for women in draught-ravaged countries. My sister is awesome.)

~*~*~EUGENE MARATHON WEEK 4 OF 17~*~*~

Some Numbers:

* 23.8 miles running (even more than the 20-22 I was shooting for - yeah!)
* 1:54:00 elliptical (solid)
* 3:00:00 strength work (woohoo!)
* 30:00 stretch & roll (meh)

Monday: a.m. strength work / p.m. karate

Tuesday: 2.5 easy to gym, 12 x (0:45 hard / 1:15 easy) elliptical, 1.5 easy home + 10:00 stretch & roll.

On my training plan this workout was 12 x (200m hard / 200m easy). If these had been longer, slower intervals, I think I would have tried them on the treadmill, but I have never had great success running that fast for such short periods on time on the ol' 'mill. Next week I have some mile repeats at LT pace, which seems like a pretty reasonable workout to try on it.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / p.m. 1.4 to gym, finish strength work, 1.4 home, karate.

On this day, I was working on the Peninsula, about halfway between home and work. One of the reasons I switched my gym last fall was because I've been doing more work off-site, and since my old gym was the one by my office, this meant that I was starting to miss quite a few workouts and shuffling the days around was becoming a huge hassle. So now I have a 24-Hour Fitness any club pass (only $5 more than what I was paying for my old gym with one site only), which helps a lot since they're freaking everywhere. So I was pretty pleased to see that there was one less than a mile from my work site.

Except no. I arrived there to find it had been replaced by a PT place. So I had to book it to the NEXT closest 24HF (so like ~2 miles away). I had enough time to get ~2/3 of my strength workout done but had to finish the rest when I got home, which meant jogging the ~1.4 miles to my local 24HF & back.

Don had a work event that night so I went to karate alone, but that was around when I was starting to feel not too great. Since there were 2 other instructors there, I bailed after half an hour.

Thursday: 6 easy + 20:00 stretch & roll. No tempo/threshold this week. And it's a good thing since I was still feeling like poo, and it absolutely showed in my pace. :-/

Friday: a.m. strength work / 1.4 to gym, 45:00 easy elliptical, 1.4 home. Trying to keep gradually upping the length/frequency of my longest runs while keeping my weekly mileage increase in check, so decided to do most of this one on the elliptical. After that I went home and slept.

Saturday: Rest. And MAN, did I need it. So much sleeping.

Sunday: 8 easy + 45:00 easy elliptical.Thankfully I was feeling a lot better Sunday morning. We went rock climbing in the afternoon, & then I went out for my coldest run in quite sometime. I know I run hot so often I'll run in a tank & shorts even into the low fifties/high forties, but Sunday evening it was tights, tank, and a tech jacket, and I was perfectly comfortable the whole time.

Also, 8 miles is another post-sfx distance record! Physically this run felt easier and more comfortable than any of them have in a while, all the way to the end, so I'm feeling pretty good right now about continuing to jump up the long run mileage ~1 mile per week.