I'm a slug, 7/17/11

Found an old draft post I apparently never finished:

Aside from 8min bike rides to and from work, I didn't work out last week. I threw in a couple of sets of push-ups against the bathroom counter and scrubbed 2 bathtubs. But no running, not even chasing kids.

In the meantime, my 3yo likes to wear his "swim soup" to play in the water, and my 6yo thinks it's a good idea to put a folding chair at the end of the slide.  We had a good visit from my brother and his family last night. They stopped to spend the night on their way back home from vacation. They have 4 kids, the oldest of whom is 10 days younger than my 6yo. The youngest does a mean army crawl. :)

I almost made up this weekend for sleep lost during the week due to staying up too late (as usual). Used the bone stimulator a couple of times last week. My shin's been hurting more; hopefully it's just the stress. I'm looking for a new job. Scary.

The new house is nice, not really any bigger as far as actual living space goes. In fact, the kitchen's smaller. But the master closet, inside storage, and utility room are all about twice the size as in the other house. Oh and the back patio too! And we lucked out and got a fenced back yard, so now we can put up the trampoline.

Bike Ride

It was a nice morning for a ride. I went out the bike path along Wyoming and kept going south. After a while it turned east past the archery range and down a steep hill and across an arroyo. I almost turned around at the top of the hill b/c I knew the hill would be a killer to ride up. But I also knew it'd be fun to ride down, so I rode down and across the bridge. It was fun, and a little scary, going down (I haven't ridden down a steep hill in a long time). I turned around at the far end of the bridge. Coming back up the hill was a killer--I had my bike in the lowest gear and almost got off to walk it up, but I had just enough determination not to. It felt great afterward to know I'd made it up the hill.

I finally got my bike fixed and started riding again last Monday, and of course it was a very windy day. I almost walked to work it was so windy, but I decided to ride anyway and did make it to work faster than if I'd walked (the going-with-the-wind part really makes the difference, and against the wind I may still have been faster than walking). Of course my butt was sore by Thursday; riding only 8 minutes twice a day can do that when you haven't ridden since the 1st of November. But the riding has already made a difference in my running. I did my 3rd weekly long walk on Friday night and put a fair amount of running into it this time. It was a good, windy run. I did start to feel the tightness along the outside of my right knee like I felt at the 10K, but I stopped and stretched my ITB a few times, and that helped.

If it's not one knee it's the other

"I was only dreamin'"...yeah.
Saturday I did my second 10K. I taking it easy since I'd hardly done any running for about a month. After warming up a bit I started running about 30 seconds at a time with a couple of minutes walking in between. Around mile 4, however, my right knee started hurting along the outside. It got to feeling really tight every time I tried to run. It stayed achy all day. Today it was feeling better until taking a walk this evening. (I walked to & from work today.) My 10K time was about 1:35hr. That's  only about 10 minutes slower than last time, so not too bad. Just frustrated about my knee hurting b/c the reason I hadn't been running was that my left knee had been hurting.

Finally not sore

On Tuesday (Mar 22 our thereabouts) I participated in a group workout that left my upper arms & shoulders very sore! We did a 30 sec work 30 sec rest circuit workout: pull-ups, jumping jacks, push-ups, supine bicycle, sit-ups, burpees, and squats. 2x. It's been at least a year since I've attempted pull-ups. I had a hard time changing clothes for the next couple of days. I was surprised my abs weren't more sore at first since I wasn't used to that much ab work either, but they got sore late Thursday. At least it wasn't all at once!

update...again

I haven't felt much like bloggin lately. One reason is that I've been writing more in my mapmyrun entries and don't like writing the same thing twice. (Though I usually tried to keep that more technical and this more general.) I also don't get much time to use a computer at home; even if the PC or netbook or tablet is available, I'm usually busy chauffering kids around or doing dishes or cooking dinner or something. Sometimes I also figure "what's the point? nobody reads this." Not that I started it hoping for an audience; a friend had invited me to access her blog, so I had to create an account, so I figured "what the heck? I'll start a running blog." Maybe another reason is that I feel like I'm not making any progress. Of course it's hard to make progress when you don't run. It's also hard to make progress if you run too hard and get injured. I wish I could find another slow runner for a running partner.

I finally registered for the Abq 1/2...um, 10K next month. I also need to schedule my fitness test for this month. (Love those. Ha.) I've been making progress in the C25K program, on week 6, but I keep having trouble with those "longer" run times (ooh, 8 min!). I also started a Polar Personal Trainer 10K training program; I'm overlapping it with the C25K plan (i.e. finding some sort of average between the two). I'm ALSO doing the Kratos.dk KB program. I'm still in week 2 of week 1. Month 2 just came out. I should do those 4 days/week. I should have worked out today, but I was full from a late lunch until dinner time! I should just go to bed now. Then I could work out early in the morning. I need to find motivation!! Motivation that will motivated me even when I'm barely awake in my comfy, cozy warm bed on cold, dark mornings!

Wed C25K W4D3 + Thurs KB W1D2 + Fri hiking

After not running for 3 whole weeks, I had a good run Wednesday. I took a couple of extra short walk breaks & felt good at the end of the workout even though I didn't do an extra long warm-up. A few hours later though I could feel some soreness in my quads.

Thursday I finally did day 2 of the Kratos kettlebell program I did day 1 about a week ago). It was a good follow-up to the running. I threw in some push-ups (modified), sit-ups, & snatches during the longer rests.

Yesterday my husband & I went hiking with our 4yo. It was somewhat slow going as you might guess. We spent quite some time looking for a geocache but couldn't find it. :(    It was around a cool rock formation though: "Sandia Stonehenge" is what the cache was called. We hiked for about 45 min I think, not counting the geocaching.

Last week I ran and then wrote a post on my phone, but it never published. Now I can't even access it on my phone. The post shows in the list and has a perpetual "publishing" next to it. That's all.

So I bought the C25K app so I can use it AND listen to music at the same time. It can't start the music from the app (it's supposed to but I always get the message that it can't) BUT I can open the music manually to play while the app is also running. (apparently the free app doesn't work that way)

Anyway I'm up to W4D2 and in the last 2 runs my left shin hurt a lot, right where  I had the stress fractures two years ago. There has been a lot of stress in my life lately. I've started applying for jobs and got a call for an interview. The guy wanted me to fly half-way across the country (not on my dime) for the interview with only a few days notice. We ended up settling on a VTC (tomorrow) instead. The job looks great from the small amt of info on the notice, but it would require us to move...again.

Thierry Sanchez has offered a kettlebell program for free (or was) at kratos.dk (here's the info: http://kettlebellfitnessdk.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/kettlebell-training-school-progressive-kettlebell-programs/) I wasn't 100% sure I was following instructions correctly to sign up--they're in Danish, but I did and the program is in English (the email it came in is also in Danish--maybe I should learn it, sounds fun!). I haven't started it yet, but it is basic and for beginners. After 4 weeks, as I understand, I should get Part 2 & so on. I don't know how long it lasts altogether, but I'm looking forward to it. I've also created a 10K training plan for the ABQ Half, 10K, 5K, Kids' K in April. I haven't registered for it yet; I plan to early next month.