CIM Week Ten–Zero Week

Let me SPOILER ALERT this monotonous recap nobody cares about anymore weekly recap by saying I cheated on Zero Week.

Just once, and it was like, 12 hours from the “technical” end of the week.

And then I ran again, today (sunday). Not as far as my pre-tib injury plan says I was supposed to, and it wasn’t magical or ‘maybe CIM isn’t a total bust afterall!’ confidence-boosting. But I ran. Pain-free.

I opted for the treadmill since I wanted an easy out if the pain came back (learning from last week’s 2.5mi walk back to the car) and because I figured if I couldn’t PHYSICALLY train how I needed to be, adding a MENTAL aspect of the boring-as-shit TM had to count for something.

And then I doubled up the mental pain threshold by ellipticizing for 40 min afterwards. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, this belongs to Week 11. Let’s get back on track…

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CIM Training – Week #10

Su – 45 min elliptical, 25 min recumbent bike. Good God this is going to be a boring week.

M – off. Got all the way to the yoga studio with my mat rolled out and got an emergency call from Brian. The “emergency” was that he was stuck at Time Warner getting a new cable box and wasn’t going to have time to go home before softball, and the dogs needed to walked and fed.

The fact that I ALMOST chose scrubbing pee out of the carpets for my 90min power yoga fix probably says something about our childbearing timeline.

T – Showed up for 6am spin all padded-shorts’d up, and it was full. 60 headphone-less minutes on the elliptical instead.

10min warm up, 40min of 2min HIIT-like intervals, 10min cool down.

* HOW TO SURVIVE CARDIO BOREDOM : Instead of thinking, ‘OMG 58 MINUTES AND 21 SECONDS LEFT KILL MEEEEEE’, and watching my life tick away second by second, I used these really profound thoughts to keep me motivated :

• Pretending I was at the track running 400s, or out on the beach path fartlek’ing, or something else that would be fun because it was running but also much more painful
• Thinking about all the crap waiting for me in my inbox and that anything would be cooler than spending an unpaid hour in the office
• Staring at people behind me in the mirrored wall and looking away real fast when they caught me. JK that was just embarrassing
• Picturing myself in the “it feels like you’re running at an incredible rate, Harry!” scene from Dumb and Dumber. Pump those elliptical arms, baby

refraining from blanketing the rest of this post in Harry & Lloyd quotes

W – Yoga! Finally! 60min of Hatha bliss. The bright side of a running hiatus is that I was finally able to “sleepy pigeon” without crying into my mat.

Th – 60min Spin. Almost got kicked out because apparently you have to register and get a ticket thing, but she let me stay. I wore a marathon shirt hoping it’d give off the right message of

“I’m in shape but not this way so please be nice to me and please don’t call me out for faking it 50% of the time you say to add resistance. Oh and have mercy on crotch”

F – Rest. Begin freaking out that Zero Week is almost over and OMG WHAT IF IT STILL HURTS??!

Sa – 4 miles on eggshells. Not the magical reunion I envisioned since every “eeeee I’m running again!” thought was trampled by “OMG does it hurt? how does it feel? is it going to start hurting??”

= 4 miles, cleared to [slowly] resume running. No hills, no “extreme” speedwork. Mileage is most important right now. And my mental well-being.

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It helped that I was able to sort of stick to my plan base (Tues speedwork, Thurs tempo/hill, etc) and keep some structure to my workouts. Like I wasn’t totally sidelined and going to lose all the work I’d put in, that I might still get some gains out of week 10.

I’m not totally in the clear just yet, but I’m really happy with the direction my recovery is headed. I’ve got 3 weeks until Ragnar and 6 until CIM.

I’ll get there.

In even better news, it was Kristina’s birthday this weekend! We went out and did things that didn’t require a sports bra or Nuun! Ok, the next morning did. Woops.

Sarah OUaL