Day 7, Week 3: Bike ridin', weight liftin', and dog lickin'.

Summer decided to make a comeback this week up here in northern Illinois, so any workouts that take place have to either take place in the early morning dark or early enough after sunrise to avoid being fried by the sun.  That's why I farted around and waited until 9 AM to do the bike ride I promised everyone yesterday.

As you can see, I'm just as surprised as you are that this ride actually happened.  It was hot, but not the "sweat is continually dripping from my armpits and raining down on the back of my calves as I cycle" kind of hot.  I had to keep reminding myself that I am not actually training for a race now that includes cycling.  As you can see from the splits, the wind slamming me in the face helped remind me at the end of the ride as well.  I didn't really plan this ride like I do when I'm training, where I plan to cycle into the wind on the way out and with it at my back on the way home.  As I've said before, I'm an idiot.

Well, the wind slowed me down along with the fact that I have to slow down before turns a lot because the corn blocks the view of incoming traffic.  I kind of like not getting hit by cars when I ride.  It's a quirk of mine.

After returning from the ride, I ate some lunch and then got down to my weight-lifting business.  First step:  Wearing the right accessories.

FYI-This is a complete lie.

Second step: Decide what workout I want to do.  This is never an easy decision for me, since I have a lot of workouts from which to choose.

Those are my four favorite Cathe series, and they all have about 5-8 workouts each. Now, I have been doing the Strong & Sweaty Series for months now, but the Ripped with HiiT was quite tempting today.  The Low Impact Series has some good strength workouts and some killer low-impact squat-filled cardio that will make your glutes beg for mercy.  Her ICE series is a nice series to use when you want to step back from so much intensity, either in the cardio or in the heavy poundage. 

So which one did I end up choosing?  After careful consideration, I chose Total Body Giant Sets from the Strong and Sweaty Series because that's what I did last Saturday and my brain was feeling lazy about decision-making...and because I got to use my barbell again.

On to the third step: actually do the workout.  This workout was delicious as usual, and I followed it up with the Bonus Abs workout that's on all of the Strong and Sweaty DVDs.  As I've said before, that workout is not for faint of heart.  And, in my house, it leads to a fourth step: Post-ab workout dog torture. What's on the floor is theirs, after all.

On a completely unrelated note, I am running a marathon next Sunday.  Actually, I'm running a 10k, then a 5K, and then a marathon.  It's all a part of the Twin Cities Marathon weekend when you sign up to be a part of something they call the Ultra Loony Challenge.

I've done this challenge since it started a few years ago, and I'm totally getting pumped already.  I don't know why I love this race, but I do-and the rest of the week I will discuss one reason a day why I love this race and this challenge so much that I completely physically destroy myself doing three races in one weekend. 

Summary o' the learnings:

• Sometimes I actually do go bike riding when I say I will
• Selfies with the bike are hard when you're alone
• I do not know how other short-haired girls look good in headbands but I always look like a mushroom of hair sprouted off the top of my head
• There is no such thing as too many Cathe workouts
• You learned what "loony" has to do with Twin Cities if you googled it while you read this post

Tomorrow's workout: 18 miles of long run goodness before the sun comes up!