(Except do, because that’s pretty much exactly what it was. I just couldn’t resist the post title.)
Now that we’re officially into March, I’ve decided that Long Branch Half Marathon training starts FO REALSIES on Monday 3/4. That gives me 8 weeks of actual training + 1 week for taper, which I think is pretty perfect – just the right amount of time that I can be motivated before I burn out and lose my mind.
Maybe it’s because I knew I was starting training for real next week, but this week unintentionally became a cutback week. My shins weren’t feeling so great, I was tired, I was busy, blah blah blah. I needed to do exactly what I wanted to do this week and nothing more, and I refused to feel guilty about it because that’s what this training cycle is about: training hard, yes, but also making sure I’m never NOT having a good time. Which is why I’m letting my poor, barre/pilates-battered body (more on this in a post later this week) languish on the couch watching the Fashion Police Oscars special rather than running the recovery miles I had on my schedule for the day.
Hi, Sunday morning guilty pleasure. (via nbcumv.com)
So, training starts for real this week. I haven’t blogged about training (slash, at all… but the advantage of this wonderful lazy Sunday morning is that I’m going to bang out a lot of posts on things I’ve been meaning to blog about forever) in a while, but in the interest of accountability, here’s what I’m hoping to get done this week:
- 3 days of running (1 long run of 8-9 miles, the other two, TBD)
- 1 gym XT class (either Noncontact Boxing or Total Body Conditioning… I’ve been avoiding these classes because I’m scared of them, but I need to man up and get back to strength training)
- 1 Flywheel class
- At least 1 yoga class
I kind of hope that my blogging about my training (both the good weeks when I nail every workout and the accidental cutback weeks when I replace runs with watching Fashion Police) shows maybe one or two people that for all of us who blog/tweet about running, racing, etc., it’s not always as easy as it seems. Some people seem to have endless superhuman tolerance for training, and I admire them. But for many of us, it’s a constant battle between making the right choices and the wrong ones, and simply doing the best we can to balance it all. Theodora had a great post about this last week, too. And sometimes it’s about a weekend that includes a lot of both working out and Cadbury mini eggs. But I will never ever pretend that it’s easy, or that Cadbury mini eggs aren’t delicious. Because come on, guys. Television and Cadbury mini eggs are amazing and you and I both know it. So there.
TV is the best. End of story.