Week 9 Redux, Day 1: Feels Like the First Time, Feels Like the Very First Time

I hope the crude title offends no one (I am not talking about Week 1 Day 1 when I refer to the first time). But I just got back from starting off my second take on Week 9 and OUCH. Oh my god. I actually LIMPED half the way home. The cherry on top of that shitty sundae was the skinny bitch who ran very speedily right by me while I dragged my left leg behind me, obviously an hour into her run and moving at a pace about 5x what I manage to pull off at my fastest. I hate her. (Also she nearly killed herself darting into traffic when she got the no walk sign because she just couldn't slow down. F YOU FAST RUNNING GIRL.)

Okay. I'm not actually in that shitty a mood, but seriously my legs hurt so badly. I extended my cool down walk by an extra four minutes so that I could sit down without collapsing, crying, giving up on life and begging my dog to end it all for me. My calves, my shins, my left foot and my hamstrings all ache. My left side hurts about ten times worse than my right -- which is usual for me and probably an indication that my form is bad, I'd guess. However, I would like to point out that my quads do not hurt, and that I was babysitting and wearing leggings yesterday and the kid decided he wanted to lay on my lower legs so I could raise them and make him "fly," you know -- that move. And when I lifted my legs with him on my calves, I could see my quads clearly defined through my leggings. I am officially hot shit. Maybe not as hot as running girl whose dust I ate, but still pretty hot.

Tonight, I decided to run to my own mix. I love Carli, but one week of the Week 9 podcast has been enough for me. Plus I had this intense plan to psych myself out -- new music with no clearly defined midpoint, and I began my running route kind of backwards so I couldn't keep such intense track of how much distance I still had.

This worked, kind of. Still, at about the same point I had to walk during my last run -- I could vaguely keep track of about where I was -- I got stomach cramps, leg aches, etc. I had to slow down to probably my slowest "running" pace yet. I looked like the old folks who speedwalk in malls before the stores open, but with a tiny extra hop to each step. Frankly, it was embarrassing. However, I never actually slowed to a walk. When the cramps disappeared and my breathing felt more under control, I forced myself to speed up gradually. Then one of my favorite upbeat songs came on (I timed that one incredibly -- btw it was "This Modern Love" by Bloc Party) and I knew I could make it to the end. At 30 minutes, I wound up with one short block left to match my distance from 2 runs ago. I ran an extra 52 seconds to meet the distance. Given the way my legs feel, on Saturday I will be stopping at exactly 30 minutes regardless of distance.

I hope that walking my dog later helps work out this soreness. I need a personal masseuse if I am going to keep with running. At least until I'm in better shape. Is getting in shape worth this? Are the cheetahs worth this? I honestly don't know. I'm gonna guess that not feeling like an out of shape asshole is worth this.

30 Minutes: 2 Minutes Too Long, According to My Legs

I just completed Day 2 of Week 9, and I made it through the run again (though, again, I did not reach 3.1 miles). OH MY GOD, MY LEGS. I almost sat down and cried on the walk home. Then I sat down to take off my Yak Trax, and I almost stayed there and cried. Then I audibly whined while stretching, and almost cried again. It's worn off a bit and really only warrants a sad face now, but it was definitely worth giving up and crying during the cool-down walk.

I find this amusing because, though I think my legs have been achy since beginning this, I feel like this ache is so much more intense than week 8's aches (haha, say that five times fast). Would my legs implode if I tried for 32 minutes? Gee whiz, muscles. Quit your complaining.

So now I'm trying to decide whether to finish week 9 in six days, as I'd planned -- I have a friend's birthday on Monday, so I can't run that night -- or whether I should give my legs a rest and finish it Tuesday, taking eight days to finish this week. I might opt for the latter. Besides, I'm about to hop in the shower and then go to Wisconsin, and I'm reading at a sex show on Sunday night and cannot guarantee I'll be back in time to cram a run in there.

Have a lovely weekend! I will be sitting indoors reading while my more adventurous friends go snowboarding and skiing.

I Can Run For THIRTY MINUTES!!!!!!!!!

Week 9, Day 1 complete, and I ran for 30 minutes. Yay!! My left calf feels like it's gonna fall off, but hey, such is the price of accomplishment.

It's cold out there! In the 20s (the temperature has been rising and I'm becoming a baby about anything less than freezing). However, I think we're past ninja mask weather (knock on wood). Carli's mix is funny. First of all, personally I would put "Song 2" by Blur toward the end -- it's fantastic, but it's also about two minutes long, so you feel like you've accomplished a lot by running to one song, and really you have not. Then comes Daft Punk's "Better Faster Stronger," which is a great song to run to, but about halfway through I started to have a strange sensation, like I was a running robot. It was weird. And I have to disagree with having the Eminem song on there. The one from 8 Mile was fine, it's somewhat inspirational. This one is very angry-sounding. I do not like angry-sounding when I run.

Oh, and the WEIRDEST part -- "Eye of the Tiger" is on there, but it is not the vocal version, it's a weird muzac-ish version in which the music is the normal Survivor music, but the melody is electronic. It's a bad instrumental, and it makes me sad.

Anyway, it's still pretty decent, despite all this weirdness. Or at least, it's runnable. And I ran, and it was okay. I felt good for awhile, around 20 minutes I wanted to quit and had to slow down a lot. I had to ask a guy and his friend to let me through around 28 minutes, and the guy was all, "Oh, have a great night! Be careful!" and it was really cute, so that helped me pick up my pace a bit at that point.

The only annoying thing is that I only ran 2.84 miles, but I have at least a month to better my time if I am doing the Cheetah Run 2010: Save the Cheetahs! (I plan to add a bit to the name of this run every time I talk about it). So, whatevs! Now time to take a hot shower in hopes that my damn muscles will stop aching quite so much.

Seriously. The cool-down walk was painful and I was a floppy weirdo with little control over my body. Ouch.

Week Four: OUCH

Time to blog while icing my knee (that sounds like I'm frosting it!).

So, good news first. I can "run" for five straight minutes. By run, I mean jog at an exceptionally slow pace, but I still feel totally accomplished. I made it through both three minute runs and both five minute runs and it's only day one. I rule.

Bad news -- good god, the pain. During the running, after the running. It's like every week, a new location aches. Today, I was surprised by pain in my lower calves. I don't want to brag or anything, but even when I'm living my usual totally sedentary, fat-inducing lifestyle, I have crazy muscular calves. No one knows why; perhaps my mother stood in front of the microwave too often while pregnant with me. So this was a cruel blow; I never thought my trusty calves would betray me. And that pain began during, like, the end of the first of four running cycles. So that was good.

On the one hand, it's kind of nice that it is primarily my muscles and not my lungs that are begging me to stop. On the other, my thigh muscles sometimes ache when I press the gas pedal in the car, and this makes me feel like an old, uncoordinated lady.

My next run is planned for New Year's Eve. Wow, I can't wait to limp around in heels and a pretty dress that evening.

p.s. Just to keep you all updated on the weather, it was 23 degrees when I left to run, it's 18 now, and I did not wear my ninja mask so my face is kind of numb. Still snow and ice on the ground (til March/April, I imagine) so I used Yak Trax again.

Second Run

According to weather.com, it is 10 degrees F right now, and feels like -7. I just completed my second run. Shockingly, I was the only person running in the park this time. To prepare, I wore a wifebeater under a long-sleeved tshirt under my new hot pink fleece hooded sweatshirt. I also wore 2 pairs of socks, my fleece-lined sweatpants and my ninja mask.

As I feared, that was overdoing it. Sure, it felt appropriate during my walk to the park. However, after like 2 60-second runs, it did not feel any colder than Tuesday outside. My glasses were an issue again, as wearing the ninja mask made them fog up when I breathed. I pulled it down over my nose for awhile, then down to free my mouth and nose. Eventually it was way too warm and I took it off. However, in similar temperatures I will probably continue to wear it and then rip it off halfway through, because it has a little neck cape feature and right now, the only really cold parts of my body are my outside and rear thighs, and my neck/double chin. Plus I'm sure I scared a few people.

There was more snow on the ground this time and I wound up running on the grass for like 5 minutes at a time before realizing I wasn't on the path. The path was packed down by other runners and rather slick, though, so actually fresher snow was less risky for running anyway. I went through all five Kleenex and may need more next time. And I am a mouthbreather while running. Is this a problem, ladies? My nose gets so stuffy.

Btw, I forgot to stretch -- I'm on a tight schedule today and shouldn't even be writing this right now. So, we'll see how that feels tomorrow. The day I have to clean my whole house and put up Christmas decorations. Sweet!

Update: I just remembered I did not put deodorant on today. Even sweeter!