Getting back in the blogging saddle: BMW Dallas Marathon and other stuff

I last blogged in September.  Buh.  It's been busy and stressful since that time, with work craziness increasing exponentially and with my recent move to a much larger house and all.  So of course to relieve all that stress I decided to give myself another job: writing blathering facetious nonsense about my workouts and races again.  I want to get back in the blogging saddle so I can have something to look forward to doing that's not work-related...and where I can have fun with words instead of writing words dressed up in administrator-ese all the time.

Anyway, let's get started with the facetious nonsense of my most recent marathon: the BMW Dallas Marathon that I ran last weekend.

I tried to race this hilly little race last year, if you recall, and crashed and burned by mile 15.  This year I had no aspirations of racing it, as my training hadn't been all that consistent.  I barely did any 20 milers due to my left butt injury rearing (pun intended) its ugly head again, so I went into the race just aiming to finish and have a good time.

Only one of those goals was accomplished, however--my legs were dead from the start of the race, so there was very little enjoyment. (Unless you count the time one cheer station had donuts and I gladly downed one like it was the last food I would ever get on this earth.)  It was around mile 6 of this race that I realized I needed to take a break from all the high-volume running, backing off from so much running until training would begin for Glass City in late January.  Any full marathon I had scheduled between now and late April was downgraded to a half marathon to give my legs a break. After Dallas, that was the one lesson I learned--it's time to back off a little.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been working out--far from it.  I'm still using the My Run Plan app, and it seems to have the recovery plan I need right now.  Last week it scheduled me for nothing but cross-training, which allowed me to re-discover some old workouts:

Cathe's HiiT Circuit: Upper Body is a nice little workout, with some light weight work sandwiched in-between some high-impact HiiT intervals.  I haven't done Cathe's Supercuts in a few years, so I had honestly forgotten what it was all about.  Here's what I was thinking during the workout: "Meh.  Too easy."  Here's what my back and lats were saying the next day: "MY GAWD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US"

Seriously.  That workout is light on weight poundage but heavy on DOMS.  Go into this workout with open eyes and thoroughly warmed-up quads.

I also got to hop on the indoor cycle a few times, doing my now-old-fave Cycle Sweat workout and trying a new-to-me-but-I've-had-this-DVD-for-years-and-never-done-it Cathe cycle workout CycleMax.  It's a pretty solid workout, but I was left wondering why we even needed a seat after spending so much time during the workout out of the saddle.

Even though I've been working out, my legs feel a ton better from the break from running.  The app has me running a whopping one mile today, so I'm going to try to fit that mega-run in some time after I finish cleaning my new house and frantically working on things for work that needed to be done a week ago.  I don't know how often I'll blog with my crazy work schedule lately, but know this - I'm going to blog when my brain needs it the most, that's for sure.

Did you miss the stupid learnings at the ends of my posts?  I know you did:

• I promise posts in the future that include way more bullet points.  Because the world needs more bullet points.
• I was seriously bummed about how tired my legs were during the marathon.  Sometimes you gotta suck it up and back it off.
• That donut in mile 22 was UHMAYZING
• I'm becoming very very fond of indoor cycling.  Very.
• I don't think my lats will ever fully forgive me for inflicting SuperCuts on them.  

Tomorrow's workout: The app says "rest day" which I'm interpreting as "let's get back to heavy weights already"