Random Fitness Ramblings

The past few weeks have been full of fantastical fitness happenings in my life.  Well, not really, but I have thought a lot about stuff that's important to me regarding fitness, recovery, and working out lately.  So, if you choose to read further, you will now be subjected to some random fitness ramblings about topics that probably only interest me.  And maybe you.  But you'll never know unless you read it, right?

Rambling #1: Compression Stuff

When I do my training runs, I have this tendency to run all my speed work too fast.  I'm talking "so fast that I got seriously injured and thoughts of stress fractures were prancing around in my frontal lobes at all times and giving me more wrinkles" fast.  In my injured state, I read a lot about what other runners were saying helped them not become injured during training (besides stop running my speed work so moronically overfast).  One of those things was compression socks/sleeves/garments.  So, having a habit of plunking down tons of cash for stuff simply because it's for running, I bought some compression socks and sleeves from various companies (CEP, PRO Compression, and SL3S) and have been wearing them during training and for running races. I have even purchased recovery socks, and--believe it or not--wear them after a race or hard workout to recover.  Below are some images of how sexy they are and remind me of when I was a kid in the 80s and we all wore our socks that high and we were the COOLEST:

Grey shorts = I look like I didn't quite make it to the bathroom during my run.  SL3S compression socks.

Recovery socks.  They feel awesome.

CEP compression socks for my first run in Ragnar.  I'm not a huge fan of these.

Half-marathoning-it in my PRO Compression socks.  I dig these.  

To put all these socks to the test, I performed a series of highly scientific experiments.  For the socks designed for running, I ran in them.  For the socks designed for recovery, I recovered in them.  From those little experiments, I used a rigorous data collection method known as "asking myself a question and then answering it."  The question asked was, "Do I hurt less during and after I use these expensive things--Yes or No?" After careful systemic analysis of the data, I have come to the conclusion that the CEP socks I have are the ones I like the least.  I experience the most pain during and after my workouts in them (maybe I need to go down a size, even though I measured my calf circumference just before buying them?).  My favorites so far are the SL3S calf sleeves and the PRO Compression socks, because I experience the least pain during and after running.  The only negative about them is that these companies need to start making them in purple or navy blue, because those are my two favorite colors in the entire universe. (Can you tell from the pics?)  The recovery socks I do like as well--I sleep in them and my legs wake up feeling all bouncy and ready for the day.  I feel it important to note at this point that the shin splints that plagued me after my last half marathon have pretty much disappeared since I have been recovering/training in these socks.  But that could also have been a result of....

Rambling #2: Ice baths.

 As I have already mentioned, I had the shin splints from hell.  This was right before I was supposed to run  Ragnar Chicago, which I thought might be a tad unpleasant with shin splints.  After coming back from an easy run with my shins screaming, I elected to try ice immersion for my shins.

This was my response face to my husband's incredulous "why is my wife sticking her leg in a bucket of ice" look.  Yeah, I can throw down the looks, yo.

Now, some say that you shouldn't do this, because you're basically stopping the recovery process, and it is from this process that you make gains in strength, speed and endurance.  Others say you should do this to aid in recovery and to help your legs feel fantastic the next day.  Because I wanted to see for myself if this whole icing thing was worth it, I again resorted to my science teacher training and designed an experiment to see if plunging body parts in ice would help them feel better the next day (as well as my nagging, annoying ankle injury that made it feel like someone was pulling up a sock that was on the inside of my skin).  Here's a run down of my experiment and my results:

Step #1: Run.  Then stop running at some point.
Step #2: Immerse body parts in ice for 10-15 minutes or however long I could stand it before I wimped out.
Step #3: Go to work and earn money for more running stuff.
Step #4: Come home and go to sleep.  Dream about buying running stuff.
Step #5: Determine how body parts plunged in ice felt the next day upon rising and stumbling down the steps half-asleep and not stepping on any sleeping dogs.
Step #6: Repeat Steps #1-5 for 3 months.

Results:  Said body parts that were immersed feel better--MUCH better.  Shin splints have not been felt for at least 4 weeks, but this could also be a result of a vacation in Alabama where the researcher's mother makes excellent Southern food that may have special healing properties.  Further experiments are warranted that involve eating copious amounts of this food.

So, according to my research, ice = body parts feel better.  As a matter of fact, I have moved up to taking full-on ice baths after running (see picture below).

Just chillin.  Dig the homemade ice cubes?

However, icing will not prevent you from doing stupid things while training, like running your speed work too fast.

Rambling #3: Cathe Friedrich never fails to make me think I'm going to die.

Cathe Friedrich is my favorite DVD-trainer-person ever.  I will gladly arm wrestle anyone who wants to argue with me on this, especially since Cathe has done quite the nice job of helping me get some upper-body strength and definition through the remnants of my former fatness.  I did two of her workouts this week that were new to me, To the Max and Pyramid Upper Body.  The former is a step workout like no other--no complicated choreography, just simple HiiT moves that will leave you a sweaty, drenched mess and needing a towel to wipe the sweat off of anything in your exercise space because it will be drenched in sweat, too.  The latter is a pure weight-lifting workout that uses simple moves but pyramids what weight you use to do them.  How effective is this workout?  Well, let me tell you all of the things I am had a hard time doing today as a result of doing that workout yesterday:

• Washing my back in the shower
• Making right turns while driving the car
• Making left turns while driving the car
• Opening the front door 
• Closing the front door
• Doing anything involving lifting my arms above the level of my shoulders
• Doing anything that involved moving my arms medially or laterally

I think I had been hitting a plateau with my weight-work (I believe it makes you a stronger runner who can endure to the end when form starts to crumble), and this workout was what my muscles needed to wake 'em up again.  Plus, I love Cathe because she doesn't just make the same old DVD with a new name on the cover. And she's not afraid to lift heavy or make workouts that make me think I will drop dead after it's over.  And she doesn't scream at you, she motivates you.  I love that woman.

Well, I appreciate it if you've made it all the way through this rambling post about ramblings. If you have any ramblings of your own that pertain to fitness or any of the contents of this post, feel free to share.  Or not.  This is a no-pressure kind of blog.

Motivation.

I really didn't want to run this morning. Every muscle fiber in my body was screaming at me to go back to sleep. I almost listened. The comfort of the bed in my mom's spare room was calling me, and I didn't relish another hot and steamy run in the wee hours of an Alabama morning.

But I got up, got dressed, and went for the run. I think sheer force of habit was what propelled me into my clothes and out the door.

A 7 mile run was what was on the training schedule. I didn't want to go 7 miles after running a 5K race yesterday. But I programmed the Garmin and took off up my mom's driveway to the street, my thighs screaming their usual beginning-of-a-run protests the entire time. I took a left onto the street, thinking there were less hills that way. I also planned on kicking it down a notch on the speed today to appease my thighs.

Well, I was right about less hills. But my plans for slowing things down was blown at about 0.75 miles out, when the dogs came.

I was running around a curve when I saw the first one, a blonde mid-size dog that was roaming in a front yard. He barked and circled, and I thought I was in the clear, seeing as he was staying in the yard. I planned on trotting right on by until I saw what he was really doing-calling his buddies. Two larger black dogs appeared, caught sight of me, and then the barking began in earnest.

I had quickly turned tail when I saw the two black buddy-dogs appear in the yard, but I still heard them barking behind me long after I thought they shouldn't be. At this point I still wasn't running very fast, just plodding along in the opposite direction of the dogs. But when I turned around to check where those dogs were, I saw that they had left the yard and were high-tailing it down the street after me. In my mind their slobbering barking faces were hell-bent on having my sweaty human flesh for breakfast.

Needless to say I had to crank up the speed. My Garmin watch has pre-programmed speed zone settings like "run" and "jog" and "slow run." I would categorize the speed with which I ran down the street in a new zone of my own design called "hauling some serious ass." I ran in this zone for a full 800 meters, until I heard the barking finally fade away.

Talk about some unexpected speed work. And some unexpected motivation. After that, I busted my butt trying to get that run done in case those dogs were roaming the highway on which I was running, trying to catch the scent of my sweaty flesh again.

Fear can sometimes be a great motivator. Not exactly ideal, but this morning it got the job done. Sometimes I'll take motivation wherever I can get it.

Cathe's CrossFire: Let the DOMS begin.

I received Cathe's latest workout videos in the mail on Monday after pre-ordering them--CrossFire and To The Max.  I was excited to receive them not just because I love me some Cathe Friedrich (I envy the woman's lats.  I know this is strange, but when you're staring at the woman throughout a workout video you tend to notice these things) but also because I really wanted more of her higher impact routines.  After suffering an ankle and hip flexor injury because I am too stupid to recover properly after running a half marathon, I have been sticking to her Low Impact Series (very awesome) for my strength and low-impact cardio needs.  However, I am one of those freaks of nature who really enjoy jumping around in the privacy of my own home to get a good workout, so I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of her new DVDs to satisfy my jumping urges all in the name of "It's a new workout and I have to try it even if I am still slightly injured because it's new and I can't let it sit there and collect dust after I paid good money for it now can I"

So, after running an 8K race on Wednesday, I decided to throw Crossfire into the player yesterday for some cross-training.  Cross-training, indeed. I feel like someone broke into my house during the night and beat me with a police baton.  Or a bassoon.  Or rebar.  Or any other object that could cause the trauma I feel in my back and legs this morning.

If you're an intermediate or advanced exerciser, the moves in this workout won't be difficult to do; they are pretty typical of Cathe higher impact workouts.  But this time she organizes them into blasts and tabatas, The main difference between the blasts and the tabatas are that the tabatas include exercises that you do for 20 seconds followed by 10 agonizingly fleeting seconds of rest (helpful countdown clock included onscreen).  While all the moves in the blasts or tabatas are very doable, I found that they were deceptively simple--I really didn't think much of the complexity of the workout until I tried to get out of bed this morning and had to ask my husband to give me a push because my lats and back were refusing to get up with me.

But that's why I love Cathe's workouts--she uses simple but effective moves that get the job done.  For example, in the Circuit Blast (the longest segment, clocking in at almost 23 minutes), the moves were simple but new--many were ones I had never seen before in the Cathe workouts I owned, like the warrior lunges or the power scissors with a jump tuck.  I appreciated that she doesn't just recycle old moves over and over again like some fitness personalities; when you buy a new workout, you get some new moves.  However, the learning curve with these new moves was small, which was very much appreciated by this exerciser with no sense of rhythm.  


Another deceptively simple segment is the Bonus Core segment.  After doing this segment, I thought I had wasted my time, since it does not include any crunches or other typical ab exercise--it only includes moves that work the entire core (which didn't feel sufficiently worked afterwards because my abs were not crying out in pain).  Unfortunately, a lot of them involve holding a plank of some kind, so your wrists take a hell of a beating (or at least mine did).  But my core region can tell you this morning that I was not wasting my time; those 9 minutes I spent were working not just my abs, but my entire back and obliques as well.

She is also creative, and manages to come up with some ideas that at first make me think, "Whaaaaaa?" and after I do them make me think, "*Bleepitybleep* I'm going to feel THAT tomorrow."  Take, for example, the Firewalker Tabata.  This is where you do all sorts of insane things with a resistance band (what Cathe calls the Firewalker band) around your legs.  You do a variety of crazy jumping and squatting moves with that band around your legs, which set all my legs muscles a-quiver by the end of the tabata.

But what really turns me on about this DVD is the premixes.  Now, all of Cathe's workouts come will uber-cool premixes you can do if you want to focus just on cardio, strength, a body region, or just are short on time, and this one is no different.  However, I think this DVD includes some really thoughtful premixes that make sense.  For example, there is a less impact premix for people like me who injure themselves frequently; there is a "CrossFire Extreme" premix for the workout crazies (as I like to affectionately call them); and there is a veritable cornucopia of timesaver premixes to stop anyone from having an excuse to get in a workout.  If there's any reason to pay that little bit more for a Cathe DVD (because they are more expensive than others), it's for the premixes alone.  The premixes allow you to buy one DVD and use it every day--but get a different workout each of those days depending on the premix you select.

If you're on the fence about getting this DVD, jump off that fence and then run to your computer to go buy it.   You can't go wrong with this simple-to-do yet versatile workout if you can handle the high impact--and if you can't, she's got a premix just for you! But if you won't listen to me, you can listen to my back and leg muscles; that is, as soon as they get back from trying to find out who broke in last night and hurt them.