Strava & Instagram, I Am On You

Last week I gave in to peer pressure & finally joined Strava.

TA DA!! Also, why has the internet suddenly become
obsessed with circular profile pictures? Lame city.

I put the little "LATEST RUNS!" widget in the right sidebar over there, but so far in spite of my having logged a bunch of runs, it still says, "Angela has not logged any activities yet," which is weird and a bummer & *totally* false. (I will fix it if anyone can tell me how.)

Being pretty new to the whole thing, I don't really "get it" yet & am kind of hoping its many glories will become clear to me in the fullness of time. To be honest I'm a little hesitant to join yet ANOTHER social media platform and ANOTHER place to log my miles. I can't help thinking about how DailyMile was such the new hotness among recreational runner / blogger types 3-4 years back & now it's kind of become the Friendster of online mileage platforms, which makes me wonder if a few years down the road Strava will join it as, I dunno, the MySpace of online mileage platforms, once our mileage / routes / KOMs are uploaded automatically via Google Glass.

But hey. I'll totally try it for a while & see if it moves me. I haven't quit Twitter yet!

What I'm saying is if you want to Strava at me, you can go here. Don't ask me what to do once you're there because I haven't the faintest idea. I've been entering my workouts; the ball, as they say, is in your court.

Oh yeah, & Cathryn also inspired me to resurrect my defunct Instagram account!

Apparently I took one picture last year of a pile of meat
before abandoning this, so.....we'll see how it goes?

Also, I'd like to direct your attention to the fact that even though I never told a soul about this account, I have followers. Thirty-seven of them. Thirty-seven people saw that one picture of a pile of meat & were like, I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE. WTF, internet people??

Anyway, if that's your bag, you can follow me here. I can't promise it won't be all shots of food & booze. But at least they'll look #crappychic? Which I guess people are into now?

* * *

Grand Total: 58.8 miles

* 8.8 running
* 39.5 bike (easy)
* 10.5 bike (speed)

Monday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 13 bike / p.m. karate

What a difference good sleep makes. In spite of waking up at 3:45 and 5:10 worrying that I'd overslept, I woke up with my alarm at 6 a.m. feeling actually not like death & excited about getting to the gym for some strength training.

Okay, maybe not excited, exactly. But again, let me emphasize, not like death.

Tuesday: a.m. 2.8 run / p.m. bike, 2.6 warm up + 5 x (5:00 @ 5K effort, 2:00 easy) = 13.1 speed

Dead legs on the 'mill this morning, so my cadence was maybe not so quick at first, but I warmed up after a few minutes & things gradually got easier. On the other hand, it was encouraging to find that being tired and not really feeling it now results in pretty good/not terrible form, where as pretty-good-not-terrible used to be all I could do at the best of times & "tired/not feeling it" usually meant piss poor form.

Wednesday: a.m. strength work / afternoon 6 bike + 3 run / p.m. karate

Ugh. I don't really know what it was, but when I left work on Wednesday, I just could. NOT. face the thought of getting on the 'mill for 25 minutes & then on the elliptical for 20 (which was my loose plan). So instead I did ~21 minutes of hard-but-not-stupid-hard spinning, then did my 24 minute run when I got home. (I am guessing this does not technically count as a "brick" since I sat in my car for 45 minutes in between.)

It's funny how the more strength work I do and the more targeted and focused it's gotten, the more I can feel it in my form. The leaning forward just gets easier & easier. Which in turn makes it easier to load up my hips & use my glutes & hamstrings well. Which makes it easier to keep up a good cadence. Which is all related to landing softly & quietly on my feet & keeping all my various bones & muscles & various other tissues comfortable & happy. It still takes a lot of effort, but I have to admit it's getting easier every day.

Thursday: 11.8 bike

One of the advantages of keeping a weekly training log in narrative form rather than just the numbers is that over time sometimes patterns emerge that might not be as obvious otherwise. Apparently, Thursday morning rides / runs are just always tough. I'm sure the dead legs & falling asleep on the bike/treadmill is a combination of late-week accumulated sleep debt (though I have been getting better at going to bed early! I swear!) & general physical wear & tear and the fact that it comes on the heels of karate & our inevitably late Wednesday night. (I have no excuse, really, for not getting myself in bed at 10pm on Tuesday & Thursday nights, but on karate nights, we don't even get home until nearly 10, & then still have to eat dinner/clean up/get ready for bed/the next day/etc.) So I've kind of just accepted that Pathetic Thursday (Morning) is a thing & I just shouldn't sweat it too much.

Friday: 3 run + 6 bike.

For whatever reason, I was just so incredibly unmotivated for this workout & wanted so desperately to just go home & pack for Paso Robles. Knowing I wouldn't get any running done in Paso, though, I dutifully marched myself to the gym after work and cracked the glass on my EMERGENCIES ONLY!!! training playlist. (Seriously, I haven't had to resort to music for motivation since 2006. Oy.)

Thanks to a little help from these & others...

...I made it through 25:00 of running & 22:00 of spinning relatively unscathed. And, as per usual, felt a hell of a lot better after than before.

Saturday/Sunday: Rest/drink wine.

This weekend was our twice thrice however-often-we-feel-like-yearly trip to Paso Robles for wine tasting/buying. There might be some lovely places to run down there but I would not know as I am generally too busy drinking wine.

The Future...

You guys, I totally signed up for another 5K this Saturday (Spring Forward in Mountain View). As long as I beat my time from Get Lucky, I'll be happy. There is no beer after, but on the other hand, it's not at 11 a.m. in wine country, so that's something.