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"
