I'm gonna hate myself in the morning

Okay, so when I start talking about DOMS in this context, I’m not talking about relationship dynamics. Although, I’ve been pushing myself so hard lately that surely I fit somewhere along the BDSM spectrum.

Anyway. I digress. DOMS. Delayed onset muscle soreness. That wonderful sore achy everything-hurts feeling that occasionally has me lying awake in bed of a morning, groaning and wishing I could just roll over and go back to sleep, except that would involve moving. I get it in my legs, my arms, my back, my shoulders. Pretty much everything at the moment, because I’ve been working out every day. Some days harder than others. Is it the twinge of muscles repairing? Is it lactic buildup? I’m not sure. I should look it up, but I’m not too keen to explore a google-cavern right now as it’s almost bedtime and my tea’s getting cold.

My left shoulder, currently, is a bit of a worry. It’s been hurting for a couple of days now. It twinges when I finish a set of pushups, and this became a lot more noticeable when I did 10 sets of 10 the other day. Yes, I do believe I’m a bit of a masochist, thanks for asking. I did a couple of trial sets of spiderman pushups afterward, and the twinge made me stop. It’s still there, so I’ve eased up a bit in response. I’m hoping this is actually just muscle soreness, and not something worse. That shoulder pops out all the time (not full dislocation, just a sort of semi-out-of-jointedness) and even the exercises that the physio gave me so long ago don’t really seem to strengthen it much. Maybe I’m going too hard.

I am building massive guns, though. Biceps may be glamour lifting, but there’s nothing like getting a little arm definition to boost the old self-esteem. I’ll take pictures. Eventually. Consider it a work in progress.

I will need a barbell, soon.

I’m hoping to get up and run in the morning but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. It’s kind of freezing out there in the morning. Yesterday’s run was okay because it was a little later, no beanie required but gloves and a hoodie were standard uniform. Took the gloves off halfway through but I could feel my hands stiffening up so I put them back on again. The hoodie only went around the waist for my final sprint. I’m quite happy with my recovery. 15km in not too bad a time, about an hour and forty minutes. Not exactly Speedy Gonzales, but I’m getting there. Starting to think about maybe hitting a half next month, as I missed the one earlier this month and that makes me sadface. I could always do with another medal.

Well, this tea ain’t gonna drink itself, and this Doctor Who certainly ain’t gonna watch itself.

Grown-up things and suckage

I have this stupid mental block when it comes to doing anything that might be considered as responsible or grown-up. You know, just like pretty much everyone else on the planet. I procrastinate like crazy when I have things to do. Washing. Cleaning. Working out. My favourite pastimes and hobbies. Wait, what?

I’ll amend the following statement. I USED to have a stupid mental block when it comes to doing responsible or grown-up stuff. Now I just seem to have a natural aversion to doing anything. At all. I hope this is just a bout of seasonal laziness coming to the fore rather than a symptom of something more serious going on. Maybe I’m just in a funk, but given the choice between doing something (like guitar, reading, writing) and doing absolutely nothing, I’ll probably keep staring at that TV screen until I turn into an extension of the couch.

I’m probably over-reacting. I mean, the house is pretty spotless. Well, mostly. If you don’t look at the kitchen. I may not have washed my clothes in a little while, but I know there are still underpants in my room somewhere. I didn’t get up to run this morning when my alarm went off, but I woke up at 5am and it was raining. I took the choice to stay in a toasty warm bed. I shouldn’t be beating myself up for it or screaming “ENTROPY!” into the cruel and uncaring sky.

Seasonal laziness. That’d be it. I’m stressed about stuff, but I’m not going on some nihilistic bender.

I did run this afternoon. First thing after I got home. I changed, did some jumping jacks to get the blood pumping and headed out into the admittedly chilly evening to evade some zombies and gather supplies to rebuild my town. Nice 5km dash. Not too slow.

It is getting kinda dark at night, though. I gotta say that when I run in the morning I’m usually less jumpy than I am if I run at night. I mean, what kind of psycho would be lurking in the park at 6:00 in the morning? They’re all too tired, from lurking in the park until 2:00 in the morning. That’s when the park gets too boring, and even psychos gotta sleep sometime.

I had this whole concept that I was going to write about, and I swear I had some sort of point, but I think I’ve forgotten. And I’m too lazy to try to get back to the point, so I guess I’ll get off my fat ass and go to bed. After I wash the dishes, I guess.

Grr.

I hate being an adult.

From the ashes

It’s been several months, yes. What happened? I’d like to blame this on the bout of appendicitis I had in early March, which led to subsequent chopping out of said appendix and subsequent recovery from said chopping out. But I know that would be a pile of crap. My last entry was about a month prior to that. No, I’ve been neglecting my blog for a far less understandable reason.

Basically? I lost all my enthusiasm for running. I burned out. Sad, no? I told myself I didn’t have anything interesting to write about because I wasn’t doing anything interesting, while ignoring the fact that nothing I do is really interesting anyway, but it’s my job to turn this dull and meaningless chore that is running into a fun-filled adventure.

I would get up in the morning and run, but it was getting later and later because I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed when I needed to go. My runs would get shorter and shorter because I actually had things to do later on, which was why I tried to get up earlier. It was a cavalcade of fail, ladies and gentlemen and other. Maybe this bout of potentially life-threatening infected internal organ nonsense was actually the kick in the ass I needed. Wait, not the ass. A kick in the stomach? Yeah, felt like one.

I was told when I was in the hospital that I wouldn’t be able to work out for a month. This wasn’t an ideal situation, and even though you’d think I’d be relieved to take a little running holiday (and also miss the Canberra Half Marathon, incidentally) it was endlessly frustrating.

It was only about three weeks before I started to work out again, albeit carefully, and at the start of this month I jumped back into the running with newfound gusto and also a newfound lack of fitness. Wow, I deteriorated really, really quickly. Week before last, I could barely manage 5 kilometres. Last week, I managed 10 in a relatively decent time but couldn’t manage sprints. This morning I did 10 kilometres without a rest, and although I’m getting back in stride I still hated it on behalf of my lungs.

One fun part was that I decided to run the last kilometre as fast as I could. Managed half a km before a collapsed lung… Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. It just hurt, so I stop. In any case, I managed the 500m in 2 minutes flat. Not bad.

I have to go out shortly, so I’ll cut this short but I guess half the battle was actually sitting down in front of my computer to write anything. It’s hard to admit that you’ve been lazy when the admission takes effort.

Next time, I’ll get in some egotistical bullshite about how good looking I think I am. That’ll be something to look forward to.

Or maybe I’ll talk about pirate costumes.

At the very least, I intend to come back. I can work out every day, and have done so for the last 20 days (I may talk about that, actually) so I know I can form habits if I’m committed enough.