Phase 1 - Day 20 and 21

This weekend was really busy, but I had time to wrap up week 3 of P90X and get in some fun time as well.

Saturday I was supposed to do either Legs and Back or Rest/X Stretch. The weather was super gorgeous, though, and I knew it was supposed to snow Sunday, so I decided to make Saturday the Rest/X Stretch day so that I could take advantage of the sunny but cold weather with a run.

I should state that to me, Rest/X Stretch just means I don't do P90X that day--I do yoga anyway and I'm not going to sit through an hour of stretching with Tony babbling away at me.

So yeah, I had a nice run. My muscles are generally so tired from P90X that my runs these days are more like painful, slow slogs, but it's still nice to get out there. I just absolutely LOVE the trails by where I live. They're nice asphalt paths, and they're in among the trees enough that you get pretty scenery, but close enough to the roads that it's not secluded and dangerous to run alone.

Now that I've nearly completed a month of P90X and my muscles should be pretty used to the extra effort, I'm going to build back up my weekly mileage and do the Saturday long run like I used to, so that I'm not off-track with my marathon training. It's funny, it seems SO far away, yet I know that if I lapse in training it's going to be a bitch to get it together later. So right now I have to just make the effort to maintain, until it's time to ramp it up in the summer.

Sunday dawned snowy and cold. The snow was melted by like 8am, though. But the frigid cold and wind remained. Fuck running in that nonsense. I'm just not one of those "neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night" die-hard runners, and I never will be. I like running because it's enjoyable. Add in freezing cold 20-mph gusts? Not. Enjoyable.

So instead I went over to Arwen (who is simultaneously doing Insanity over here--actually, she's about a month ahead of me) and Dan's house of funtimes, and we did our workouts together in the basement. Legs and Back is probably the slowest-paced of the P90X workouts--mostly because Tony fritters away, I don't know, A MILLION minutes jabbering about random shit between sets, to the point where I'm both in pain and all CHRIST GET ON WITH IT--and Insanity is, well, Insanity. So while I was across the room holding wall squats and deep speed skaters until I cried, mostly standing in one spot, Arwen was hopping around like a maniac to her Max Cardio Plyo Blow Your Brains Out Circuit or whatever, and it was an interesting and mildly hilarious juxtaposition, because we were moving at basically opposite speeds yet both making the "kill me now" faces and noises.

I felt really, really good about my pullups yesterday, though. I'm still lagging behind my numbers on that first week, but the chair is WAY out there and I'm using much more of my own strength to pull myself up. Somehow I did the wide-front pullups differently this week, because my forearms were a shaking mess afterward, and they've never hurt before. It felt like when I've gone to rock climbing gyms.

I also did Ab Ripper X. Go me! Twice this week! I feel good about that. I don't know why I treat Ab Ripper as a throwaway, but I just CAN NOT get into it. I should love it. It's short, painful, and effective. OKAY RESOLVED. I'm going to do it three times this week, no excuses.

After our workout fest the three of us went out to dinner at a place in Old Town that had pretty good food but pretty bad service. Not a terrible experience by any means, just sort of meh. Then we went to 7-eleven to get ice cream for Dan and went back to the casa and watched the tail end of this weekend's themed SVU marathon on USA. I could probably watch that show 24 hours a day and not get tired of it.

Today begins Recovery Week! Looking ahead, it's a lot of Yoga X and Core Synergistics, which I know from reading Fitbomb is actually a pretty difficult workout, and I'm looking forward to it. There's also Kenpo X and two X Stretch days thrown in. I'll be doing Crossfit and more yoga instead of those. Today is supposed to be Yoga X. Which means a 90-minute Moksha series for me. I don't care how hard the sequence is supposed to be, I don't think I can tolerate Tony leading me through a yoga class.

Phase 1 - Day 5

Oooooooh damn. I am going to be sore tomorrow. Today was Legs & Back, and it's pretty brutal. Squat after lunge after jump after calf raise, again and again and again. And then in between all the leg torture, we get to do enough pullups sets that apparently we did 150 pullups total. I didn't, I'm sure. But I did do about 15 assisted per set, and there were 8 sets, so... 120? Go me. My shoulders are currently in some pre-pain. I can feel it coming on.

I have to say, though, I really enjoyed this workout, mostly because I can feel so intensely the muscles in my legs and butt getting stronger. All that torture is going to be worth it for the butt of my dreams. Tony's also pretty subdued on this one, although he does creepily scream at Dreya at one point, "Whoa, the shirt comes off!" when she gets sweaty and removes her t-shirt. Ew. Otherwise, though, he's not quite as manic as usual. I kind of feel like I give him a bad rap because he truly comes across as just really friendly and generous, and he's so enthusiastic with the others and with the audience. It's just tempered by this tinge of creepy, narcissistic social awkwardness that's... Michael Scott-like, is the only way I can think to describe it. Not anything to hang him over, but I see why they provide the "mute" option on the DVDs.

Yesterday River and I were able to get a run in, thank goodness, but it was a pretty bad one because it was obnoxiously windy and River was so happy to be out of the house after all the rain that she lunged after every squirrel/leaf/runner/etc. and I got yanked all over the path. Ergh. Still, got in about 3 miles, albeit slow ones.

Tomorrow will be a long run, yoga, and resting. Then I start week 2. Confuse my muscles, Tony!