When your ears hurt when you swallow, speed work gets cancelled.

I didn't do my speed work this morning.  Or this afternoon.  Or this evening.  That's because I was sick all day today.  I would love to post really awkward treadmill running pics or sweaty pics of me post-run, but I don't have any.  All I have is this recreation of what I did all day instead:

Last night I felt a fever and sore throat (hurt like crazy to swallow) coming on, so I dutifully drugged myself with NyQuil and did some sinus rinsing.

Why sinus rinsing?  Because the last time I had a fever and a sore throat, it ended with one of my eardrums bursting and then me not hearing out of one ear for about a month.  And I was miserable. No wonder little kids are so cranky during ear infections; I know I was pretty much insufferable when that happened and was begging for anyone to put me into a coma the entire time. 

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I don't mess around with sore throats.  I rinse out the ol' sinuses and then gargle with some of the rinsing solution, and I am very glad I did.  While I woke up still having a small fever and was a little stuffed up, my throat wasn't nearly as sore and it didn't hurt so bad to swallow.

Because having a fever is where I draw the line at going to work, I emailed in sick and then went downstairs and promptly fell asleep in the recliner.  I had one blanket over my lower half because a dog was laying on it so I couldn't pull it all the way up over me, so I had to get a second blanket for the upper part of my body.

I'm sure I looked like a sleeping hobo.  But I didn't care.  I was warm.  The animals didn't care either.

I don't judge, Mom.  Just gimme treats.

Female cat was a little judgy.

Stay away from me.  Sicko.

Small dog was oblivious to my sickness and I kept getting awoken to him shoving various toys in my chair and squeaking them like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST SITTING THERE WOMAN WE COULD BE PLAYING"

I'm going to just call today's speed work a loss and move on to tomorrow's workout.  If I can swallow without pain and don't have a fever, that is.

Learnings from my sickness:

• Sinus rinsing is gross, but it will help you feel better much, much faster.  Just don't use tap water unless you want to risk getting a brain-eating amoeba.  Your call, though.
• Brain-eating amoebas are one of my greatest fears.  True story.
• The cats left me pretty much alone today to sleep; female cat only did one proof-of-life check today by booping me in the face.
• Can you tell I'm on NyQuil again?  Yeah.  You can.

Tomorrow's workout:  Maybe Cathe's PHA workout.  We'll see.

Cathe's Fit Split Push Day & Pull Day: MY GAWD, WOMAN

Today I gave my legs a break from yesterday's way too long treadmill session and did some upper body.  Since I just got some new Cathe workout DVDs, I decided to give those a shot out of the need for sheer variety.

Is it just me, or is she wearing a glove on one hand
and holding a weight in the other?  If so WHY

I was happy it was a strength day, because I woke up to this mess.  Thanks but no thanks Mother freaking Nature.

I wish the intensity of my hate for winter would melt all
that snow.

Anyway, let's talk about Cathe now, shall we?  Her Fit Split videos are made up of 2 workouts on each of 4 DVDs - one workout being a cardio workout and the other being a strength workout.  Each workout on a DVD is roughly 20-25 minutes long, which immediately made me suspicious that the workouts were super easy.

And then after doing 5 minutes of one of the workouts I was immediately wrong about that. I ended doing both the Push Day and Pull Day workouts, which are short but intense weight workouts that will make you start to cry by the end.  Not really (unless you really feel like crying; don't let me hold you back from expressing your feelings), but my gawd that woman was not freaking messing around, if you know what I mean.  Below is the breakdown of the workouts that I did:

Yay Cathe is AMAZING as USUALs:

• Holy crap I was pleasantly surprised I could do both workouts as a premix on the Push Day (and I'm assuming also on the Pull Day) DVD!  The woman really does have a premix to meet your workout needs.  The basic premixes are shown below, but there is, as usual, a cornucopia of timesaver premixes for you as well.

• Boy does she hit the ground running with the intense upper-body exercises.  While both Push Day and Pull Day have lower-body exercises, I skipped those and just did the upper body ones.  Except for the time I got carried away and did some deadlifts with a heavy barbell for some reason (probably barbell)
• Two words: Super.  Sets.  And then do them three times in a row.  She's packing in a lot of good stuff that way into a shorter amount of time.
• A few more words: The shoulder supersets on on the Push Day DVD nearly took me out.
• Just two more words: Bar. Bell.

The MY GAWD woman WHAT IS GOING ONs:

• Because she's trying to get so much in to a short period of time, the woman MOVES between exercises.  I kept missing reps getting my weights...which were located RIGHT BEHIND me.
• The exercises, for the most part, were not anything new.  Not that I need new all the time - some exercises just work and you should do them all the time.  But I was a little disappointed that there weren't a lot of new exercises.  There weren't even a lot of old exercises in there that can be new again because they haven't been done in awhile.
• You do shoulders twice if you do both of these workouts...and let me tell you your shoulders will be fried if you do the Push Day shoulder exercises first.  I think it's a little overdone on that body part, but you can always skip the shoulder exercises in one of the workouts.  
• Push Day uses a step as a weight bench, Pull Day doesn't (you use a stability ball).  Why not keep that the same for both workouts?

Overall, I dig these workouts because they are not wimpy in the least, and get the job done in a shorter time than her other workouts.  And they let me use my beloved barbell and my heavy weights because, you know, badassery.

So much to learn, so little time:

• I do love Cathe, but I'm not one of those people where she can do no wrong.
• Unless she uses a barbell.  Then she's the best workout person ever and I will hear no bad words spoken against her.
• All those premixes...you have to admit it really does take away all your excuses not to workout.  Unless you do not own a TV or computer or electricity.
• I still love bullet points.
• Winter can suck it. 

Tomorrow's workout: Speed, my friends...a descending ladder.  However, I have a fever at this very moment and am hopped up on Nyquil...so we will see.

My long run resolutions.

I haven't blogged in two days.  It's because my job was crazy, crazy busy, and I basically spent most of my day and night at work and came home and promptly passed out somewhere in the house, hoping the hubbs would take pity on me and throw a blanket on me as he passed me on his way to bed.  I think he did; it's all a bit of a blur.  I mostly remember cats coming and going on me during the night.

Hyooman.  Stop hogging my chair.

It was so crazy busy that I took the day off from productivity completely yesterday.  And when I say "completely" I mean "sat on the couch and read nothing by scary creepypastas all freaking day long and only got up to eat and use the bathroom."  My brain had been running on overdrive, and it needed to go sit in park for a while, scaring the crap out of itself and definitely not thinking about work.  I had a long run (15 miles) scheduled for yesterday, and I even got my running duds on to go do it, too:

But then I sat back down on the couch and started reading scary stories and that run got rescheduled for today when I realized it was 9 PM and I still hadn't done it.  So of course I got into my PJs and read more creepypastas until 1 AM.  Because I can stay up late and do that rather than a run, apparently.  Male cat was incredibly judgy about the whole thing.

Hyooman.  Quitter.

I did manage to do that 15 miler today, but I had to treadmill it due to negative wind chills.  Here's how it ended up:

I helpfully circled the fact that the run was on the treadmill for you.  You're welcome.

Anyway, I nailed the pace I was supposed to go, but holy cow this was an incredibly frustrating run.  And the worst part about that frustration was that it was all my fault because I had set myself up for that frustration.  And way too many trips to the bathroom.  Because of this run, I set some running resolutions for all my runs heretoforthwith so I won't have to go through what I went through today.  What did I go through, you ask?  Read my resolutions below to find out.

My 2018 Running Resolutions So I Will Reduce Any Running Misery That May Occur That Would Be From Me Being An Idiot Before The Run:

1) Get my weekend runs done as early in the morning as possible.  The later I wait, the more my motivation disappears and then I open up a web page of scary stories and then it's all "Run?  What run?  It's too late to run now."

2) No red meat the night before.  Ever.

3) Stop with the mental self-sabotage of "OMG I have to run ALL THOSE MILES on the treadmill??? I WILL NEVER MAKE IT"

4) Always have the movie you want to watch on your Kindle downloaded before the run starts so you don't have yet another excuse besides scary stories to cancel your run on the day you're supposed to do it.

5) Under no circumstances will I ever, EVER eat Atkins candies that contain sugar alcohols before any run ever, unless I want to make 7 trips to the bathroom like I did tonight.


I guess what's important is that the run got done.  And that the dog kept trying to photobomb my post-run pic.

What's also important is that I watched Wonder Woman during the run and I wanted to kick some serious patootie afterwards.  That is, if my legs weren't so tired and I wasn't so sweaty.

And learnings are important, too:

• Seriously, you'd think I would have learned my lesson about the sugar alcohols and bathroom visit frequency thing by now.
• While I was alternating between running and bathrooming, small dog was doing this.

"At least you get to go inside, Mom."

• My eating was pretty good, by the way.  Been eating my veggies twice a day and I discovered these are FREAKING AMAZING (they were sent to me in my Stridebox last month.  Or this month.  I don't remember.)

Large dog was not nearly as excited as I was about these
nuggets of goodness.

• If only you knew how bad I smelled in that post-run pic.  If you look closely, you may be able to pick out stink rays.

Tomorrow's workout:  Upper body!  I may try some of my new Cathe workouts, too!

I'm really tired so it's just a haiku for you

I was doing Cathe's Low Impact HiiT (Workout #1) from her Ripped with HiiT series at 4 AM this morning, went to work, and just now (10 PM) stopped working.  So I'm a little too sleep deprived-groggy to write a lengthy coherent post right now.  Instead, I decided to throw out a post-workout pic and haiku to go with it, continuing with yesterday's poetry theme.  Enjoy!

Much jumping and sweat
Posterior very sore
Cat says suck it up


Tired and sleepy learnings:

• I have got to come up with better ideas to get more sleep other than "self-induced coma."
• My high school English teachers would be proud.  Not really.
• This was supposed to be an easy day but you stay in a squat position so much in that workout that going to the bathroom requires a lot of forethought at the moment.
• In fact, it requires more forethought than that haiku did.

Tomorrow's workout: Total body weights--hello, barbell!

A tempo run limerick. With pictures.

There once was a runner named Terie

Who's running partner was all brown, black, and hairy

We went a-running tempo,

Going too fast and not slow

Making Terie so stupid it's scary.

Lame limerick learnings:

• Confession:  I totally had to google the structure of a limerick before writing this.
• So I guess I haven't learned my "let's try and run our tempos at the right damn pace" lesson.  This was supposed to be at marathon pace (9:20).
• I was supposed to do 5 miles at tempo, but, you know, got up 15 minutes late and had to shave off that last mile.  Better some of the run than none.
• Large dog was SO HAPPY it was warm enough for him to run with me that he celebrated by dragging me into many, many ditches.
• Please feel free to express your amazement at my awesome limerick-writing skills in the comments.  

Tomorrow's workout: Total body, baby-I have some new Cathe workouts to try!!

Four pictures, four facts, and a barbell: Everybody got time for this post.

Here are the facts:

1) This morning I did Cathe's Lift It, HiiT It: Chest, Triceps, and Shoulders, which involved a barbell for some of the shoulder and tricep exercises.  Those exercises were so good even female cat couldn't stay away from this workout.

Hyooman...weights on barbell puny.  So disappointing.

2) Female cat may be correct about my puniness.  The shoulder press/upright row superset combo (which, as I remind everyone, was done for three sets in a row) was kind of killing me this morning, even with only 30 pounds on the bar.

My shoulders were making the same face.

3) I must have gotten a good burn, though, because I was pretty much ravenous all day.  I would eat something and then 5 minutes later my stomach was all, "Did you feed me?  I can't tell."  However, I did manage to turn down a scrumptious-looking cupcake and avoid buying that huge bag of organic gummi bears at the gas station after work when I went in to try and get a reasonably healthy dessert-like substance, so those were my eating wins for the day.  That and I got to eat my granola bar in my office with my medals to keep me company.

I should get a medal for not buying those gummi bears.

4) Female cat is still unimpressed and looks down on all my workout and eating accomplishments for the day.  I just can't win.

Hyooman.  It never ever be good enough.

So few facts, so much learning:

• Why is it when I do this short posts there's always four?  I have no idea.  It just happens.
• Those gummi bears were organic...doesn't that cancel out the calories?  Or something?
• For those of you that say you can't do workout DVDs because you have no space in your house...did you notice that my barbell will hit the ceiling fan if I'm not careful?  And that I do that with a couch, cat tree, and stacks of really bad B-level DVD movies the hubbs yanks out of the Farm and Fleet bargain bin in the background?  You gotta work with the space you have.
• Female cat talks big for a feline that flees panic-stricken every time I open a can of sparkling water.

Tomorrow's workout: 5 mile tempo run at marathon pace.  I may get to do it outside, even.

Every graph tells a story. This one tells a really stupid one about running.

When I taught physical science back in the day (which consisted of basic physics and chemistry), we used to give students graphs and have them write the "story" of the motion of the object depicted in the graph.  I was the object in motion this morning with my speed workout (4 x 800 meter repeats at around a 7:40 pace) on the treadmill, and here is my graph:

So here is my story:

One day a slow old runner got on the treadmill to do a speed work at a faster pace than she has done in a while.  This is because she is trying to be a faster old runner.  Anyway, she starts running at a slow, turtle-like pace while watching the news because SO MUCH NEWS.  But then, because the furnace stopped working last night and it's, like, winter, it was so cold that her nose was constantly running, so she had to stop to blow her nose.  Then she kept on running at that slow pace for about a mile until she realized she was supposed to run faster for about half a mile and she had completely missed when she was supposed to up the speed.  So she started running faster, but then her damn nose kept running and she almost blew a snot rocket on the carpet out of habit but, thankfully, she remembered that she had a rag on the treadmill and she used that instead, stopping to make sure her aim was true.  Then she continued on with the workout.

Next, she walked her 2-minute recovery, gasping and panting and warm enough now that the lack of heat in her house didn't bother her that much.  The cat stared at her from the cat tree, accusing her with his eyes of being an idiot who was running to nowhere.

Despite the feline negativity, the old runner kept going with her 800 meter repeats, doing three more and walking each recovery, only adding a few more seconds to those 2 minutes rather than an extra 20 or so like she was tempted to do.  As she reached the end of the last repeat, her husban finally came downstairs to get ready for work and asked, "Honey?  Are you sure you're supposed to be running that fast?"  At that point many dirty looks were unleashed upon the hubbs by the old runner, causing the hubbs to run and hide in the bathroom.

Finally the old runner finished the last repeat and got off the treadmill to get ready.  While the old runner was completely stoked at having done those repeats at that speed, the resident animals expressed their opinions with their eyes.

Eyeball translation:  Can we get some breakfast now?!?

The old runner didn't let all the indifference and snide hubbs comments stop her from taking a completely stupid and blurry selfie afterwards and posting it on her blog.

And thus ends this graph's story.


And the morals of this really horrible story are:

• I couldn't think of anything actually creative to write about today, so this is what you get.  
• If I were to grade this like I used to for my students, it would get a "oh geez REWRITE THIS"
• It actually was a pretty good workout, even if I didn't listen to music to cover the sound of my 800 meter repeat-wheezing.
• The furnace conked out last night and the hubbs couldn't get the part he needed to fix it until today.  That pellet stove you see there is what is preventing the animals from becoming animalcicles today while we're at work.
• No, I am not comfortable leaving a fire burning in my house all day, even if it is contained in a small metal case.  But I had no choice.
• You know what's a good way to generate some heat for your house?  Do a speed workout on the treadmill.

Tomorrow's workout: More upper body goodness with more heavy weights!