Heart grow fonder

I've decided that running, like most of my relationships, is best when we don't see each other that often.
After a 3-week hiatus, and deciding I was in winter running retirement (and I mean "retirement" in the Brett Favre sense) I was overcome with the urge to take a quick jog on Saturday. A quick jog turned into a six mile run, at sunset, along the coast. This time, I was rewarded with the sight of a massive cruise ship leaving port and slowly slicing through the water, lit up against the greyblue sky, as I rounded the back of Castle Island. Despite my burning lungs and snot-covered jacket sleeve, I stopped in my tracks and let out an instinctive laugh of pure joy. It's a weird reaction I've realized I have, but it's certainly not bad. During a good, solid, "fast" run, especially around sunset, I often find myself stopping, staring, and laughing. Ahhh, endorphins.
Interestingly enough, after three weeks of not running, I ran a faster 6-miler than I think I have run all summer. Despite a hard wind in my face, despite my face insisting on producing snot rockets even though I have a strict no-snot-rockets policy. I've realized this past year that the less I run, the better I am at it. The bike intervals are really helping my endurance and leg turnover, and the kettlebelling is really helping my leg strength. My calves are killing me, though.

If only I could find a way to stop my nose from running so much, I think I'd run through the winter.

Instead, I'm going to get back to weightlifting. If I can find a time when my little gym isn't so crowded, I'm going to start off with a 2x/week barbell program with squat, bench, deadlift, and overhead press. I'll do the 30/60/90* intervals on the bike twice a week, and possibly throw in at least one kettlebell session. After six weeks of that I'll reassess and come up with a new plan!

*30/60/90 is my new favorite cardio workout. I picked it up, of all places, in Glamour magazine and it's loosely based on some popular class at Equinox. The basic idea is that for the first ten minutes you do 30 seconds hard, 1 minute easy; the second 10 minutes you do 1 minute hard 1 minute easy; third ten minutes you do 90 seconds hard 1 minute easy. It's challenging, fun, and makes time fly by. It even makes the elliptical difficult. I love it, and every week I crank up the resistance just a little. It's fun to see how many more miles I put in for the same 40 minutes.

These are the people in my gym-orhood

Since we're still on break, the gym is blessedly free of awkward undergrads and lots of people I work with who I don't necessarily want to see me in my sweatshorts (nor I them, in their sweatshorts). It is not, however, free of "characters".
Today's highlight was a slightly older gentleman who I see frequently. Judging by his age and sweet 80's-mullet-lite, I'm guessing he's probably a Media Arts professor or something. Anyway, he refuses to pull back his lionesque mane with a hairband, and runs quite quickly on the treadmill without moving his arms at all. Today I noticed he was actually holding 5lb dumbbells by his sides, running bolt upright, probably faster than I was running. Huh. I mean, hardcore, but strange.

Today's workout :
4x8 sumo squat with 12kg kettlebell (alt right and left arm)
2x30 Russian Twists with 12kg kettlebell
5min warmup on treadmill, 20 min tempo run at 9:13/mile (woohoo!), 5 min cooldown
Week 1 day 2 of the Hundred Pushups Challenge - 6,8,6,6,7 with 90 sec rest between each set.
I couldn't quiiiite finish the 7th rep on the last set but it was a good effort.

pushups are hard. so are fractions.

It's kind of weird, but I've started to really enjoy going to the gym. I used to hate the gym, I mean really really loathe it. This is another strange turn of events this year, like running 13 miles, and going back to school, that I really never ever saw coming from me.
Anyway, I think it all comes down to finally getting away from the "chick" sensibility of the gym, and getting the heck away from the hamster wheels of death (elliptical - major ew, treadmill - also ew but necessary evil in the winter) and wimpy nautilus machines and instead playing with all of the fun gym toys. I've kind of started to look forward to my lunch break workouts like I used to look forward to recess when I was in the 3rd grade.
There's a big aerobic studio, which is only used at certain times of the day. I plan my lunch break around the empty times, and haul in a couple kettlebells, and kick my own butt for 20-30 minutes straight. Just 5 minutes of kettlebell swings, pushups, and light-weight overhead squats (my new favorite thing) and I am sweatier than I am after a 9 mile run. It's awesome. And gross. But only gross because I feel like I'm supposed to think it's gross. Mostly it's just awesome.

This afternoon, one of my faculty caught me in my office ravenously eating peanut butter out of the jar with a plastic knife. He was mightily amused.
I need to stock up on some more self-contained protein-rich snacks.

Anyway, back to studying for the GRE.
There is no way I am going to learn all of this before Friday. FRIDAY.
When did THAT happen?
Ugh.

New shoes

On a whim, I got a new pair of running shoes on Saturday. My leg pain was getting so bad I was convinced I had compartment syndrome and that there was nothing I could do to fix it and I should stop buying new shoes because they're expensive and maybe I'm just not meant to be a runner and ARRRRRGH. But, I found these lovely Asics Equation 2s at some discount shoe store and the difference from my month-old Rykas is absolutely astounding. I mean, they've created some new problems, namely that my toes now go numb and the collar of the shoe gives me ankle blisters but those problems are all run-through-able so I don't care. For serious though, it's like I'm running on clouds. I ran a nice 4+ loop around Castle Island in the mist and at the end, I felt like I could have kept going. So, take that legs. It's just me and you now, lungs. BRING IT.

On Sunday, I went to the gym. The FitCorp has majorly stocked up on kettlebells since I started there. This is exciting. I can only go there on weekends, but I think I want to at least try to make it for one weekend day every week. Of course, I am not very smart with numbers, and so I think I thought 12kg was a lot closer to 12lbs than it actually is, and ended up squatting & military pressing 2 12kg kettlebells which I think now is closer to 50 lbs? It felt good though. There were some old guys down there who looked at me really funny as I took my shoes off and repeatedly hoisted two cannonballs over my head, and letting out the occasional very ladylike grunt.