Back to the Grind

I have returned from my Canadian adventure, and have to say I had a great time. Food was excellent, wedding was picture perfect, and I even learned a bit about myself.

First of all I may be doing better than I give myself credit for.  Today (Sunday) I weighed myself.  This is something I decided to do every 2 weeks, so I have an idea where I am, but not too often I get discouraged.  I weighed in at 185lbs - the lightest I have seen on a scale in over 5 years.  This was a bit of a shock, knowing what ALL I had to eat and drink while in Quebec, from the social event the night before, cocktail hour & open bar the day of the wedding, including cake, 4 course meal and candy station at the wedding topped off with a beer festival on Sunday. I felt I took in way more calories than I used walking around town.  

One thing about Quebec, if you are in the old part of town it is all one big hill, waking up to this after a day on planes actually made me wish I had brought shoes I could work out in. It could be that even though I hate the idea of working out, after nearly 2 months of hitting the treadmill daily it is finally part of my routine enough I look forward to it in some deranged way?  

Although the shoes were not present, I did do a fair amount of walking around the area, at least 7.5 miles from what I have been able to decipher.  Oh and when say hill I mean HILL.

Each image was taken on a walk, from the right most near the water, going up the hill (the left most not even at the top)

Where I live I am pretty sure the general altitude change can be measured in inches over the miles (8 feet over 4 miles to be a bit more precise) , but it seems within a quarter mile the difference there was about 250 feet.

So in the end, I got more exercise than planned, and am still ahead. So today I decided to abuse myself. Now that I have class and have no time on Mondays to work out, today was to be a long day on the treadmill.  The treadmill had other ideas. I had set it for 13.1 miles. The goal to be able to propel myself that distance either walking or jogging, just to see how long it took, and to have a baseline for upcoming events, especially the Toro Loco in a couple weeks.  The treadmill apparently has a cap of 99 minutes, after that you are done - workout completed. Sure I could have reset it & gone the rest of the distance. And, sometime in the future will do that. But today I heeded the treadmill & stopped there.  I had jogged 7.7 miles in that time, a new distance record for me & although tired, was not as exhausted as I thought I would have been.  

Maybe, I am succeeding in the working out & getting in shape. MAYBE I will be able to complete the events I have on my plate.  We will see.

VACATION!!!

I made it.  I have survived working out to make it to my vacation.  No more workouts for the next 5 days.  Sure I will completely destroy all the work I have done in a matter of 1 weekend but it will be worth it.

(Instead of the over used leaving on  jet plane, I think I will celebrate w/ some Fletch)

In the last 30 days I have worked out 27 of them, totaling 82 miles or 12,300 calories.

The next few days will be spent eating junk food, wedding cake, Quebec red tailed deer & what ever else Canadians eat while celebrating the wedding of a dear friend.  oh and drinking lots of alcohol too, as I wont be driving anywhere and sure as hell don't understand Quebecois. (Its bad enough you guys speak French, but to have it be a version of French you cant find online to learn, that is just plain rude)

Unfortunately, once I return my life will become even more hellish with the addition of a college course sucking up one work out day & being less than 30 days from the Toro Loco Challenge. 

This is why it is called an act of stupidity.

So....

First of all , the back pain has been subsiding, albeit slowly.  Hopefully I will be back at 100% for my trip to Canada next weekend. Just in time to make other bad decisions.

But I woke up today w/ pain in my left shin.  Now I had noticed some tenderness there a couple days ago after a work out, and attributed it to just over use. I have been on the treadmill in some capacity for 13 days in a row starting July 27. Yesterday due to my mom being in town & staying in the room it is kept I did not workout. It was kind of strange, maybe I am getting used to it being part of my routine, as much as I hate doing it. Thus I find it odd that today I have the pain,it makes more sense to me if I had been exerting myself, however I had not.  Guess it is something else to keep an eye on.

In other news the Arizona Republic had an article today about 'mud runs'  It was mostly an ad for a particular event, and to help tout an article they plan on doing on their 'team'  and looking for people to join it.  Still it is nice to see them taking notice and having the list of upcoming events. I am also amused that being a newspaper & having access to researchers, they do not list 4 events that I do on my Arizona races page that are occurring later this year. This includes the November event Erika is participating in that already has over 1000 people signed up for it and the October event I am volunteering with.

Finally, for any people interested, the founders of Spartan Race have published an ebook (FREE), it deals with history, training, rules and articles on some amazing people, I hope I have the time to read it this weekend.  Being self published it is not the most refined in look, but may have some useful info. Stay tuned.

Ouch

I hurt. Specifically my lower back hurts. It is my fault. But I fear this will effect me more than I'd like.

Some background:

In Arizona a few years back we got rid of pretty much the last of the old blue laws concerning alcohol sales. Sunday Aug 1, 2010 was the first day you could purchase alcohol before 10am in Arizona on a Sunday.  Although not a big drinker, I started the "Annual Beer & Doughnut Run".  The first Sunday in August at 6am begins a ride around town which includes buying breakfast & alcohol, just because you can.  Today was the 3rd annual  Beer & Doughnut Run (and also International Beer Day).

In preparation for this I ran a lot yesterday, 6 miles in 80 minutes.  The fastest & longest I have run since beginning this. I felt pretty good about it & the approx 906 calories burned.  

This morning all went well w/ the ride.  Ride - check.  Beer - check. Doughnuts - check. But the place I got the doughnuts was across town, and I was bringing stuff home.  it did not fit on the bike well, and to avoid crushing the spoils, I put the ill-fitting box in a backpack & rode home, sitting in an odd manor. So odd in fact that knew something was going wrong while riding, as i felt every bump in the road. But being an idiot I pressed on. I was in a lot of pain when I got off the bike, all in the lower back.

Needless to say it has not been the fun day I had planned, and I am hoping I am not doing as bad tomorrow, but only time will tell.  I did work out a very little today to try & stay limber and because I recently read that with injuries like this the best thing may be to use them not to baby them.

We will see......