What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger…….runners.

OK, so I was going to complain about the snow, but it’s not ALL bad. It’s made me take a few rest days that my body definitely needed, I’ve gotten creative with my workouts, and it’s a good challenge to prepare me for anything on race day. I was starting to feel a little warn out at the beginning of the week anyway and if I had pushed myself I probably would have gotten sick. Instead I kind of took it easy this week.

Monday I did 60 minutes of intervals on the elliptical. Tuesday I did another stair climb work out and on the last set of lunges, I heard something in the front of my right hip snap and felt a little give. No pain, but still worrisome. I was planning on doing another 90 minutes at the gym after the stairs, but I skipped it and went home to ice my hip. Wednesday I was a little sore, but walking fine and managing stairs fine. I emailed all my athletic trainer buddies and determined that I most likely snapped a tendon over a bone, like plucking a guitar string. No biggie. Proceed with caution and monitor pain. I took a rest day Wednesday just to be safe. I don’t want to get injured and not be able to run Boston. I’d be devastated.

It worked out really well that I took a rest day Wednesday because the Sesame tempeh quinoa that I made for dinner Sunday and packaged for lunches was so friggin delicious that I had already eaten it all by Tuesday and had no food left to have for lunches for the rest of the week. So, after work I went to the grocery store and got more food for the rest of the week. Sometimes it’s hard to believe the volume of food I consume now. I lost 100lbs. and I think I eat way more now than I did when I was overweight. I just eat REAL FOOD instead of pre-package processed foods that are full of crap your body doesn’t need. I still love food and eat everything, but I find healthy alternatives to the junk I use to eat. Trader Joe’s makes Doritos that are out of this world and Ben and Jerry’s fair trade milk and cookies ice cream is a yummerific treat. Dried fruit is like candy and I eat peanut butter by the spoonful.

Thursday I returned to the gym for one of my new favorite sweat sessions that Mother Nature inspired with the last storm making it impossible to run outdoors. (100 jump rope skips + 1 mile on the dreadmill + 2 miles on the bike) x 5 It’s kind of fun and I get in 5 miles and it doesn’t seem that bad because it’s broken up and I’m not on the dreadmill for a continuous 45 minutes. Plus, I’m totally spent by the time I finish the last 2 miles on the bike and there’s a puddle of sweat on the floor beneath me. That always makes me feel like I accomplished something.

Speaking of burning a ton of calories, someone told me yesterday that they wore their heart rate monitor while removing the snow from their driveway with a snow blower after the latest storm Mother Nature brought our way. Aside from the walking back and forth, I can’t imagine that it is nearly as good of a work out as shoveling by hand. I googled shoveling and it burns an average of ~400 calories per hour so you can imagine how shocked I was to hear this person burned 2000 calories in 2 hours of snow blowing. They mentioned that their driveway is long and uphill, but still, that’s more calories than I burn running a half marathon!!! Unless they were running with the snowblower or at their max heart rate the entire time I have a very hard time believing it was accurate. I may have to wear my heart rate monitor the next time I shovel for 2 hours to see if I actually burn more than 400 calories per hour. I might end up doing that tonight because the plows didn’t really do a great job of clearing my street and there are more neighbors with a serious lack of parking skills than there are open spaces.

Oh yeah, and there’s only 80 days until the 115th Boston Marathon and the finish line looks like this: