A lame post just to keep my blogging habit alive. And some race medals.

I took a rest day today.  It was forced upon me by my own body.  Here's how it went down:

1) Put Cathe circuit DVD in player and press "play."
2) Start workout, successfully completing the warmup.
3) Do the first upper body weight exercise and realize that all of your upper body muscles are all NOPE from the prior workouts this week
4) Shut off DVD and cry.

Well, there wasn't really any crying.  But I wanted to, though, especially when the pain hit on my back flys (flys? flies? ugh).  Since Thursdays are going to be an easy 3-mile run day anyway when I start training again, I wasn't especially upset.

Because today is such a boring workout day, I thought I would spice up this post by talking about some of my fave race medals again.  Some are repeats from my previous post, but they're so nice you can look at them twice.

Why are these medals special to me?  Let me count the ways:

• One of them is from a race in which I actually WON out of all of the women....so what if there were only 5 women in the race.
• One of them is SPACE-THEMED and allowed me to dip my feet in an ocean in late November.
• One of them is a huge Ohio.  Huge.
• One of them is a medal from a very hilly St. Louis marathon where I improved my time by over 20 minutes from the previous year, if I remember correctly.
• One of them is just a cool freaking belt buckle that I will never actually wear as a belt buckle.
• And one of them is from the second ultra marathon (a 50K) I ran that I did not train for yet got a better time than I thought I would.

People always ask me why I keep all my medals, seeing as they don't really do much after I get them except take up space.  Well, each medal is a memory and, seeing as how I'm not getting any younger, I gotta hang on to my memories as long as I can.

And plus, you know...bling.  It's all about the bling.  That's why we run, right?


No more bling pictures, just learnings below:

• Bling is why I run.  I don't know about anyone else.  Maybe for silly things like "health" and "fitness."
• This post is sadly short because the hubbs is demanding I go wrap his Xmas presents before Christmas Day.  So demanding.
• It's also short because it's way past my sadly early bedtime.
• Honesty time: I just slapped this post together to keep my blogging habit alive until my next training cycle.  

Tomorrow's workout: We're going to try that boot camp workout again, this time hopefully without my muscles mutinying.  

Day 7, Week 10: My favorite race medals

Here's my workout today (Cathe's Total Body Giant Sets) in three pictures:

Yoga balls used for upper body weights.

Barbells, glorious barbells.

And dogs that sleep in your workout area.

Rather than drone on and on about my love of the weight lifting and barbells, I thought I would use this post to show off some of my favorite race medals.  The idea came to me as I was fretting about hitting my time goal at my goal race coming up (BMW Dallas Marathon).  I told myself even if I don't hit my goal time, I still have to finish to collect the race bling.  And then I wondered if the bling was any good.  And then I had the idea for this post.  So, here goes, in no particular order:

Austin Marathon 2017:  Belt buckle medal.  'Nuff said.

Glass City Marathon 2014 (Toledo, OH): Marathon PR set at this race (4:09:50).

Little Rock Marathon 2016: Big ass medal.

Glass City Marathon 2017: Hellloooooo Ohio!

Lincoln Presidential Half Marathon (Springfield, IL): Freaking huge pennies!

Ragnar Double Medal - Saints & Sinners 2014: Got this by running Wasatch Back Ragnar and Las Vegas Ragnar in the same year.  I mean, c'mon--give it up for the cool upside-down design.

Ragnar Adirondacks 2016 Second Place Medal:  I was on an ultra team that won second in the Mixed Ultra category.  Almost First indeed.

BigFoot Olympic Distance Triathlon:  This is not the fanciest medal I own.  But it is the one of which I am most proud because I survived the swim.  I haven't done a triathlon since.

If anyone knows of any other races with cool bling, feel free to share so I can sign up and get some myself.  Because we all really know it's not about completing the distance and feeling that warm fuzzy sense of accomplishment - it's getting the cool medal at the end of the race that matters most.  (Not really.  Well, maybe just a little.)

End of post.  Time for learnings:

• I get a lot of weight training goodness accomplished in my living room.  You gotta use the space you have.
• I am completely used to dogs in the workout area.  If one doesn't wander through I feel as if my workout is incomplete.
• If I'm struggling in a marathon, the bling always pulls me through to the end.

Tomorrow's workout: Another rainy long run.  15 miles at 15 seconds slower that marathon pace.  Here's to hoping that actually happens.