Day 3, Week 8: Seriously reconsidering my race priorities.

This morning was some speed work.

The My Run Plan app made me do some 200s really fast, then run 3 miles, and then do more 200s really fast.

Why are some not green?  Who knows.  Only the app knows.

I have to say this about recording my workouts in the app - it is nice to be told when to run and when to walk.  Probably because it's nice for once not to be the one doing the telling-what-to-doing, and probably because that means I'm not obsessively looking at the distance on my watch and frantically doing yucky math in my head.

Anyway, the morning was foggy, which translates to humid, which then translates to one sweaty runner.

But while the run was nice, that injury I mentioned in a previous post (how my left butt and back are kind of sore all the time) was really rearing its ugly head--and not only this morning, but also whilst I was on the treadmill Sunday evening.  The pain kept twanging away at odd intervals during the run this morning so much so that I ran the middle three miles way slower than the app wanted me to and I cut the cool down short by a mile.  The only thing that gave me any relief was blasting the aforementioned left butt and back with ice-cold water for a full 5 minutes at the end of my shower.

Yeah.  I don't know what's going on, but I'm thinking about rearranging my race priorities.  How much rearranging I'm going to do depends on how the rest of the week goes.  Here are some options for rearrangement:

1) Stop running for one week, but still lift weights and cycle like crazy.  This whole butt and back thing just bothers me when I'm running-not walking or cycling, so I'm thinking this is a good first option.

2) Still train for my marathon and duathlon, but prioritize the duathlon and give up any time goal for the marathon.  So, in other words, just run really slowly and distances to survive a marathon but really train for the shorter running distances in my duathlon.

3) Give up training for the marathon and just focus on the duathlon.

4) Just stop blogging right now and start sobbing at the thought of giving up training for either of these races.

5) Make up new swear words to direct at my nagging, painful left butt and back while I sit on the couch every day not working out.

Again, I'm going to see how this week goes, and if my left butt and back can't behave, option #1 is going to be seriously considered.  Along with a lot more showers that end with a whole lot of cold water blasted on body parts.

Tomorrow's workout: Cycling.  In the dark.  Fun.

Day 7, Week 11: My sweat-filled non-running workout and stupid pictures from my conference.

So I'm traveling at the moment.  I'm at a conference in downtown Chicago until tomorrow, but I'm not letting that get in the way of me doing a sweaty non-running workout in the palace of a fitness center this hotel possesses.

I only did 30 minutes on the stationary bike, but holy buckets were there buckets of sweat all over the floor around my bike.  I felt like I needed to put up those wet floor signs so people weaving in and out of the empty bikes wouldn't slip and crack their heads open.

After that sweaty goodness, I made my way over to the free weights and did 20 minutes of weights, alternating a lower body exercise with an upper body exercise, making sure I hit all major body parts.  This induced more sweat-dripping awesomeness, of which I tried to take a picture but this damn hotel room lighting made the picture kind of suck.  But who am I to deny everyone the suckiness of this picture.

After that I had to get dressed in, like real adult clothes and do some learning and stuff.  And take stupid pictures.

As you can imagine, all that learning on top of the stupid picture taking sure is exhausting.  It's time for this little runner to head to bed now.

I may be sleepy but the learning keeps on rolling:

• I gotta get me one of them fancy stationary bikes.
• I did learn a lot today at my conference, I swears.
• The only pictures worth taking, in my opinion, are stupid ones.
• I want to know when I will not be exhausted at the end of the day.

Tomorrow's workout:  The plan says 20 miles at 15 seconds slower than marathon pace....but the fact that I'm traveling may modify that plan.