Unwelcome Respite.

I’m not running today. I’m not running today. I’m not running today. I want to, because it’s been two days since I’ve run. But my calf isn’t getting any better and I need to let it recuperate. I can’t go in to a three month marathon training season with a sore, tight calf that bugs me for months. Last year, my lower abs strain took months to heal, and left me with a lot of anxiety and fear about hernias. I don’t want to repeat that with my leg. So I’m resting it another day.

That doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing, of course. Wednesday was 30 minutes of 40/20 sec intervals on the recumbant stationary bike. Yesterday was my day with my personal trainer, and he absolutely ruined me. Lots of lifting, and conditioning type work. I’m a little sore now, but I’m going to be a lot sore in about 12 hours. I jumped rope for the first time since high school. Holy monkey powder, Batman. Three 1-minute sessions were absolutely brutal. I’ll have to do more. But the major thing that’s going to really hurt are my forearms. Lots of carrying 45# kettle bells yesterday.

BB is often telling me that if I’m not getting sore, it means I’m not doing the right kind of work. I’ve come to agree. While it’s nice that I can run a long time without getting sore, what that also says is that I’m not challenging my muscles to improve. When I work out with my trainer and feel deeply sore for a couple of days, that means I’m building real strength. I think.

The really hard part is controlling food intake. I just ate a doughnut and several doughnut holes. Of course, part of the reason I exercise so much is to be able to eat without quite so much fear of metabolic collapse, or whatever. But I’d be doing better if I could be happy eating nothing but healthy fresh foods. Wouldn’t we all.

But the truth is that I’m doing pretty objectively well. And I’ll rest this week and get back to the running on Tuesday, or so. Meantime, I have some beautiful data and I’m going to write it up for a publication. I think this will be nice and easy to get out there. And I’m excited by it because I get to make my co-worker the first author, for her first publication. And this is one that should really help her move her career forward. I like being able to help people accomplish those things.