Lesson Learned

First, the good news: I set a new personal record today! I ran a mile in 9:31. A mile. Me. Running. On an incline- well, for part of it anyway. I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever ran a mile in under 10 minutes. I can't even begin to tell you how excited about this I was. My legs still don't like to cooperate, they get heavy and sluggish, but my lungs don't burn like they used to. It's a rush, especially when I step off the treadmill and I feel like I could keep going, maybe even do a second mile.

I didn't though, because I was worried about exhausting myself before I started the WOD. Today's WOD was 32 pull ups and 32 bar dips. So I made my way over to the assisted pull up machine and jumped on. The minute I reached for the bar, I knew it was going to be a hard workout.

You see, I strayed from the prescribed WOD yesterday. I decided that I didn't want to make an ass out of myself doing box jumps in the gym, and I was pretty sure that throwing a ball at the wall repeatedly would get me kicked out. So instead, I decided to do "Barbara" again. I did that workout about a week and a half ago, and it was my favorite so far. Barbara consists of 4 rounds of 4 pull ups, 8 push ups, 12 sit ups and 16 squats. It truly works everything. The last time I attempted this workout, I did crunches instead of sit ups. This time, I wanted to see if my time went up with the full sit ups. It was a bit slower than the prior time I attempted this workout, but I was gasping for air by the time it was over.

So when I pulled myself up today on the pull up bar, I could feel the tension in my arms, fighting against me as I struggled to pull myself up. I ended up using a higher weight to assist me, but I was still fighting to make the last few pull ups at the end.

Lesson learned: don't stray from the WOD. Typically, workouts don't use the same major muscle groups two days in a row, to keep from overworking and straining muscles. There's something to be said for just doing what you're told and not having to think about it.

Once again, I'm exhausted. I'm also ticked off that the whole bedtime thing is cutting into my nights out. Friday I was out until about 1am, and I felt terrible the next morning. I still woke up at 7am, right on time, and it was extremely difficult to fall back asleep, even for a moment. I don't like waking up that early, and I hate, hate, hate feeling like I'm going to fall asleep on the couch at 9pm while trying to watch Scrubs. I also need to get some more motivation to kick my butt out of bed on the days that I don't work until 11am. I might not go back to sleep, but I don't exactly get out of bed and conquer the world either.

I've been craving a coffee, ice cream, cookies, any kind of treat lately. For the most part I'm able to keep it at bay. I don't really eat a whole lot, but I do snack on cereal throughout the day.

I didn't report on Friday, but I gained a half pound. That was really hard to see. I've been working my ass off and I'm gaining weight. That's not exactly incentive to go to the gym. So lately, I've been incorporating more cardio into my workouts. I try to run or use the rowing machine. Everything else is just crap. I used to spend hours on the elliptical with no results, now I'm running like crazy. Hopefully I'll start seeing more results from that.

I should rephrase that. I have seen results, but they're small and slow. My pants fit better, but they're not loose yet. I can wear a few shirts that looked terrible three weeks ago, but I worry that I'm not getting results fast enough. It's hard to ignore the diets and plans out there that promise 10lbs lost in 15 minutes, but I know if I go about doing it that way, I'll never keep it off and I'll never make a change.