You may have noticed that Two Fit Girls was pretty quiet in late January and early February. I don’t know what Jill’s excuse was (*ahem*), but I had the biggest work event of the year coming up. This meant long hours, complete exhaustion and not a lot of running. (People who manage to keep up a work-out schedule during times like this amaze me. I’m looking at you, co-worker David. How do you do it?)
I am making up for this with week 7, but I am so sore. Amping up the miles this quickly probably wasn’t the best idea, but Around the Bay is soooooooo close.
Week 5
Monday: Yin yoga 1:00
As per Jill’s suggestion, I tried to squeeze in some yoga at home. It wasn’t awesome: between the cats climbing all over me, the junk everywhere (Matt and I are total clutterbugs), and just the lack of soothing space, it didn’t work. I’ll give it a go again in the summer, when I can use my backyard for such purposes (the condo-dwellers next door will loooove that), but until I completely overhaul my approach to making a home, this isn’t for me.
Tuesday: 7.4km; Hot Hour @Kula
My regular Tuesday night date with Linseed and JK! Thanks to the bananas that was my schedule this week, I left straight from work and ran to yoga. I need to get more run-commuting in my life. Efficiency. Living 3k from work is amazing in every other capacity. Except this one.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: Rest
Oops. This wasn’t really planned, I just didn’t schedule smartly. And the two or three occasions I could have squeezed in a run, I was exhausted. I need to take more B12. Or build a suit of iron.
Sunday: 7.6km
This run should probably have been longer, but I needed to be at work in the am. Kendal kindly agreed to set our running date for 9:30am, allowing us to be first in line at 10am for PWYC soup. French onion soup for breakfast: not the worst thing in the world.
Week 6
Well, if week 5 was bad fitness-wise, week 6 was worse. Unlike week 5, I knew this week would happen. And it’s okay.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: rest
Sure, the DailyMile chart says rest, but these were looooong, demanding days, spent running around, wearing a headset and generally feeling more important than I actually am. In my head, I am totally counting them as exercise.
Saturday: Hot Hour @ Kula
After not running for a week, I didn’t want to go and hurt myself by launching into a series of long runs. Easing back into it with a yoga class seemed like the perfect thing to do. It also meant I could hang with JK and make some awesome post-work-out book review videos. (See the latest example below. Don’t you love our healthy glow?)
Sunday: 11km, 90 minute yin @ Moksha
I needed to get a long run in, and Jill and I agreed to do yin together, then have a Grammy viewing party. (Chris Brown is still a total scumbag). I planned for 18k but, being the moron I am, I completely mis-timed how long that would take me and realized I’d never make it if I kept running. I hopped on a streetcar, made it just in time and was so relieved to be doing a much lower intensity work-out.
Week 7
And here’s where things got back on track.
Monday: 11km
I didn’t mean to run this long, but 1) I got a little lost and 2) I was feeling pretty good, so I went with it. It felt like I was making up for botching the long run the day before.
Tuesday: 5.2km
It was rainy, and I was exhausted from back-to-back 11k runs. I forced myself through 5k, came home, and did a lot of whining.
Wednesday: rest
After working out four days in a row, I was tired. I decided to give my body a break and finish the week strong.
Thursday: 10.7km
So, on Thursday, I got it in my head I could hit 60k this week if I really, really tried. I added a few kms to my planned 8k run, and began to believe I was invincible.
Friday: 7.5km
On Friday, I felt less invincible. I did, however, do a few hill repeats on this run. I need more hill work-outs in my life. Not because I liked it. (I did not!) but because ATB and Goodlife both have their fair share of hills. And I don’t want to be the person gasping on the side of the route, begging to be put out of my misery. I will go there if I need to. I am not classy.
Saturday: Music Mix @ Moksha 1:15
In order to hit 60k for the week, I needed to run 6k this day. As you can tell, that did not happen. Pro tip: hill work-outs hurt your bum. A lot. Matt and I also visited our much-more-sophisticated neighbours the evening before, where we did things like ooh and aah over their baseboards and at-home yoga space and drank excessive amounts of scotch. Scotch is not my friend. After much contemplation (aka whining), I decided to bail on my run (I wanted my Sunday long-run to be kick-ass and not a march to my death) and go to yoga instead.
Sunday: 20.1km
The longest long run yet! Yay me! ATB buddy B and I agreed to meet up for an 8k run (we did the PubRuns Rosedale loop). I sandwiched this between 3k before and 10k after to make it a long run. Breaking it up this way was nice. Runs with B go by so fast. The weather was lovely and I felt really strong the first 16k of this run. I started to break down when I headed back home at Queen and Woodbine — the legs began to act less like muscle and more like rubber–, but managed to power through.
So, we’re all caught up now. I think I can hit 60k in week 8. I just need to give up any semblance of a social life. I am okay with that, though. Considering all my conversations these days consist of me complaining about not working out enough or complaining from being sore from working out too much, I’m not very fun to talk to. Just ask Matt.
