Day 5, Week 2: 4 AM Cause & Effect

Cause #1: I am employed.

Cause #2: I am employed at a place that requires me to be at work at 7:10 AM on Thursdays

Cause #3: I have an hour commute to said employment.

Effect #1: 4 AM running in mismatched running clothes for 5 miles.

Tomorrow's workouts: Lifting heavy things.

Day 3, Week 2: Some random pics just to say I blogged

My life.  It's passing like a whirlwind lately.  In fact, this post will be a whirlwind as well, as I only have time to post some pics about what I've been up to these pas few days.  Actual posts will be coming in the future, I swears. 

Well, as long as I don't fall asleep before I crack open the laptop.  Anyway, here are the pics!


I have been trying to lift heavy things around a cat...

I have been not wearing a shirt on the treadmill during speed work and kind of really not hating it even though my fat rolls have also been loosed...

And I did a Tough Mudder Saturday in which there was way more water than mud...

...spent a great 10 miles on course with some awesome fellow masochists...

...and totally had the same face on my face that I have at work most of the time.  I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing. (Hint:  I'm the one NOT smiling.)

Tomorrow's workout:  Indoor cycling because of some pesky thunderstorms a'comin.

Day 3, Week 1: Welcome to my day...again.

My morning started with a little treadmilling because it was raining outside at 5 AM.  During this treadmill adventure, I made a very important decision: to never wear a shirt whilst running on the treadmill ever again.  I give this decision a hearty thumbs up.

Nevermind that it's 5 AM; I GOTS NO SHIRT

Look Ma NO SHIRT

This decision came out of the fact that the shirt I had on was sticking to me like a second skin as the sweat poured out of me.  It was making me rather angry until I came to the stunning revelation that I could take my shirt off because the only people that could see me shirtless were the cats who were wandering dangerously close to the treadmill, and they weren't even really people (cats are demons, you know.  Well, my cats are, anyway).  So off went the shirt and I went on with the run. 

Speaking of that run, it was supposed to be 10-11 miles.  But it was all "1.75 miles warm up" and 1.5 miles cool down" and "3 x 2 Miles" and then I was all "GEEZ RUN PLAN APP WHY SO MUCH WARM UP AND COOL DOWN" and finally I went "BUH I need to get to work some time today" and ended up doing a 1.5 mile warm-up and then 2 of those 2 x 2 miles.  Which was fine with my left butt, which really didn't care for 2 mile repeats at all by the end.  But it held itself together for this last treadmill picture:

And then I went off to work, where it was my school district's first day with students.  So I reasoned that it was technically my first day of school, too...or my 4,181st day of work, depending on how you look at it and how good at math you are.  In my eyes, both are worth celebrating with an incredibly stupid pic.

You know what else is worth celebrating?  The end of this post.  I promise something more coherent tomorrow when I'm not trying to keep my eyelids open as I type.

Tomorrow's workout: Some bike riding in the dark! (If it's not raining)

Day 2, Week 1: Welcome to my day.

Welcome to my day, which contained:

1) A barbell-intensive upper body weight workout that included my very own spotter

Bicep curls aren't the same without him

2) Navigating the rest of the workout around animal obstacles while I try to get swole in my living room.

Laundry basket not included in the workout.  Or the cat tree.

3) Sitting in my office for the rest of the day working with way too many spreadsheets that had way too many little lines that eventually resulted in me wearing a headset in front of a Chromebook because I couldn't take it anymore.

Seriously--who *wouldn't* want my life?

Answer: I don't even want it some days. 



Tomorrow's workout: Some speed...for 10-11 miles.  MyRunPlan App WTF

Day 1, Week Who Knows?

Well.  I only managed 11 miles of an 18 mile run.  Again.  As you can imagine, I'm a little disgruntled about this.

Disgruntled Level: MAX

 This extreme shortening of the run was for two reasons:

1) The exhaustion from yesterday carried over into today and I didn't get going until 8:30 AM. Which meant it was getting a little toasty outside.
2) My left butt reared its ugly glute pain in mile 8 and it was all I could do to get back to the house.

I tried to do the last 7 or so on the treadmill, which is where I can unselfconsciously run without a shirt and take selfies at an angle that doesn't reveal all my copious fat rolls, but my left butt was having none of that treadmilling either.

WARNING: Snazzy visor and extremely white belly alert

So I had to seriously revise my race goals, people.  Here's the deal:

1) My new goal race is the Dallas Marathon in December.
2) Until my duathlon, I'm only running 11-15 miles on Sundays.
3) I changed the number of run days per week in the training app from 4 to 3.
4) I'm going to have to start my day and week numbering for these posts all over again.  Sorry about that for all you Type As out there.
5) It's a stupid idea to train for a long-distance duathlon and a marathon at the same time.  Really stupid.

I feel good about this decision, as I can now solely focus on my duathlon (less than 30 days away!) and then just putz my way through the Twin Cities Marathon like I normally do.  Now if I could only decide how to end this post...I think a random pic of one of my animals will do the trick.

And there you go.

Tomorrow's workout:  Upper body weights!  Abs!  Nothing involving my legs for sure!

Day 7, Week 9: I've been a little busy.

As anyone who works in public schools can tell you, this time of year gets a little hectic because, you know, school starts back up again after that weird 3 month break we take.  And since I'm in charge of some of the activities for all of this starting up, my life this week has consisted of a lot of not sleeping, talking, running around setting things up, and trying not to fall asleep when someone is talking to me.

Oh, and I did manage a few workouts this week.  Some lifting, some running in the dark, and some cycling in the living room.

I did have to abbreviate a lot of the workouts in order to make it to work on time (hour commute yo), but my left butt has thanked me for that by not screaming at me anymore while I run.  So it all worked out in the end.  Well, I hope it's the end of my left butt screaming at me, anyway.  It was pretty quiet during this morning's brick workout:

A few things about this brick workout:

1) I didn't want to do it.  I was exhausted from the week's activities.  I just wanted to sleep until late in the afternoon and then eat until I fell asleep again.  But then "56 miles" kept running through my head and the fear of dying during my race won out.

2) I actually had another 50-mile ride on the schedule for today, but I just wasn't motivated to do it in the heat (I didn't head out until around 9 AM).  Instead, my brain decided that brick workout would be a nice compromise.

3) I decided to head out on a road I hadn't biked on for a while just to mix it up a bit.

4) I am a complete moron because a) WTF kind of compromise is a brick workout in the heat of the day especially when you do the running on a road that has NO shade and you're running at 11 AM in August for crying out loud, and b) that freaking road mentioned in #3 was one huge uphill climb full of rolling hills for around 8 miles and I was a gibbering mess by the end of it.

Well.  At least I did a workout today, even if it did almost kill me.

And now I shall end this post to put it out of its misery.

Tomorrow's workout: 18 mile run because, as we all know by now, I'm an idiot.

Day 7, Week 8: A stupid FAQ about a stupid 50 mile bike ride.

I mentioned yesterday that I had one heck of a bike ride planned for today.  50 miles of cycling goodness, to be exact.  And I'm as surprised as anyone that those 50 miles actually happened.

Five OHHHHH my quads hurt

Why was I surprised?  Well, that sounds like a good start to one of my world-famous stupid FAQs.

So, why were you surprised you could do a 50-mile bike ride? Didn't you do 45 miles last weekend?

Yes, but the number "50" is nice and round and large enough to make my brain start this crazy mantra even in the middle of actually doing it.

"I can't do this I can't do this I can't do this WHAT ARE YOU DOING I can't do this" 

Also, it didn't help that my quads were really tired and I put the part of the ride with all the hills up front, making my quads scream from the get go and further feeding that false mantra.

What kept you going during the ride, then, if you wanted to quit early on?

The fact that I blogged about doing 50 miles yesterday and so...shame if I didn't actually do it.  Yeah.  Shame. That's healthy, right?

Hmm...maybe no so healthy.

Wait...haven't you done a 50 mile ride before?

I sure have - when I was training for a half Ironman that ended in DNF shame and excruciating IT band pain.  

Well, how'd that first 50-miler go?

You can check out the details for yourself below.

How does that ride compare to the one you did today?

Well, I have to say that I did just a tad bit better.  Like a half-and-hour freaking better.  But it has been four years since that first 50 miler and I am juuuuuust a tad bit more trained for distance than I was back then.

Well, it certainly seems like you've improv-- hey, wait a minute...why was your last 5 miles today so much slower than the rest?  Slacking much?

Two reasons, really: 1) My legs were really, really tired.  Like, really.  Really, really REALLY tired.  And 2) those last 5 miles were up a huge hill and then a turn right into what was a light wind but felt like a wind tunnel by that point in the ride.  It was pretty much all I could do just to keep going at that point and not pull over, go sit in a corn field, and cry myself into oblivion. 


Sounds like bad planning of a route to me.  Can't you do a better of picking a route?

Well, I could pick flatter routes, but, you know that duathlon bike course pretty much consists of 56 miles of nothing but hills.  So, if I went with flatter training routes, I'm pretty much increasing the odds of actually sitting in that cornfield and crying during the race.


Understood.  Can I ask what time goal you're looking at for the bike portion of your duathlon?

You may ask. 



Oh...you want me to answer the question too.  I don't really have a time goal.  Unless "survival" is a unit of time now.


Overall, how do you feel about your ride today?

My face in the pic below pretty much sums it up.

BUH it's over. 

Tomorrow's workout: As if 50 miles on the bike wasn't enough today, a 17-mile run is on tap for tomorrow.   *quietsobbing*