Day 81: Sore!

It's legs day again here on PCP Street. Yeeeee-ow! Creep is such a killer. I'm not even going to mention how many steps we're doing because I don't want to scare the newbies. :) Suffice it to say, it's a lot. But I can actually do it, which is amazing to me. I was thinking about what Louise said, how she was grateful that her muscles didn't pay attention to her brain telling them what they couldn't do. I wasn't sure about making it through that last set of creep, but I decided to let my muscles tell me instead of my brain. And, of course, I was able to do them all. Then my muscles yelled at me for a little bit, because they were TIRED.

This was all after a little walk/run outside. Today was one of those days where I just did not want to see that jump rope, and the humidity here is finally below 98%, so outside I went. I intended to walk for a while, but I felt so good that I just kept breaking into a run for a bit. THIS IS STRANGE.

Before starting the PCP I was a beginning runner. I did my first 5K almost a year ago, and I did another in April. A good friend of mine is a very happy new runner -- she's really taken to it and now goes all over the place doing 5K and 10K runs -- and she encouraged me to try my first 5K. I was terrified but she came along with me and it was actually pretty fun. I had to take some walk breaks but my overall time wasn't bad. Then we teamed up with 3 other women and did a marathon relay in Louisville (my portion was 5K, hers was 10K) and that was fun, too. Really hard, but I enjoyed the excitement of being around all those people and the whole hoopla of the event.

But I really didn't like running. It was really difficult for me to run for any length of time -- 5 minutes felt like an eternity. Basically I was doing it to be more active, hopefully lose some weight, and do something with my friend. I didn't really lose any weight, probably because I ate like a horse, rationalizing that I had "worked hard" today so I "deserved" a cookie or whatever. (Now I really see the folly of those ideas.) I did the training I needed to do to get through those races, and then I said I'd see how I felt after the PCP.

I'm still not sure I'm going to be a real runner, but I can say that running today was easier and more fun than it has EVER been. 20 pounds less of me to move around makes a big difference. I'm lighter and stronger, and my cardiovascular conditioning is so much better, but I hadn't really noticed those things until I tried to do something that I used to do. I can't wait to go try another yoga class now -- I used to do a fair amount of yoga before my daughter was born, but have only done it a few times since then. But I'm willing to bet I'll enjoy it more now.

Big fun weekend coming up. We're going to a baseball game tonight with my parents -- there's a nice little minor-league stadium downtown, right by the river, that everybody says is great, but we've never been. (I'm packing my supper to take with me -- hot dogs, no thank you!) Then tomorrow night is my third indulgence, a little late because of my husband's work schedule. Our anniversary is next week (married 9 years, together for 14 years), so we're going out for a lovely dinner on Saturday night. Sunday we're all going to a friend's house for the afternoon for swimming and dinner. I'll have to cram in my workouts amongst all that fun, but it doesn't seem quite as hard as it used to be.

Hope everybody is hanging in there -- my Day 81 pals as well as my Day 51 and Day 20 buddies.