Injury Files: I'm bad at this.

I’ll admit it:

I haven’t been paying much attention to blogville for awhile now. Part of it is the fact that I’ve got a metric shit ton of work to do (not all of us can be iced coffee sipping, cross-fitting, body pumping, expensive yoga pants wearing housewives).

Part of it is I’m sick of this shit.

Yet I persist.

That said, one thing I’ve noticed is that many of you have an enthusiasm for cross-training I just don’t. You drop 50 bucks to take a spin class that you call “Soul Cycle” (which is really code for “trendy trust fund babies wear expensive clothes and pay too much to work out”) and talk about how its life changing.

I get on one of those infernal indoor bikes and want to die from breathing in hot gym air and give up immediately.

You people pay 50 bucks for yoga classes and talk about how it “HEELS YOUR SOUL” or something equally lame.

If I attempt yoga I’ll either fall over from being bored or because, well, I suck at it.  (Also: yoga is for hippies and rich people that make money off hippies and I’m neither so…yeah.)

That said, my inability to put down significant mileage isn’t making me to go the gym much more often. When I do I tend to putz around on some cardio machine I can tolerate (oddly enough? The stairmaster) before doing core shit and maybe going to the pool where I attempt some form of pool running. Unlike you waifish fast kids…I can’t do that shit without  belt. I don’t know if it is because I am fat (I thought fat floats? I sure as hell don’t), a poor swimmer, or just uncoordinated. But I can’t manage it without  belt.  So its a fairly pointless exercise in futility that leaves me smelling of chlorine, sweat, and shame. This ends up taking up a couple hours of my time that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve accomplished much of anything.

And again, unlike you housewives and trust fund brats…I can’t afford to dedicate hours to working out  on a daily basis since I have actual work to do. Which is why I’ve made an attempt to run daily since my hips are relatively stable right now.

That said, I’m a bit dismayed to report that I am not bouncing back as easily as I’d like.

It turns out that running with your hips in the wrong place for years leaves you with some weird muscle imbalances and I’m having a hard time putting on miles without some nagging pains. Nothing horrible – just adaptation pains. But it’s enough to keep me from pushing too soon…and this isn’t a bad thing!

You’d think this would be enough to get me doing more non-running stuff, right?

Well, it’s not.

If I can’t run…I can’t get myself motivated to do much of anything else. It seems pointless.

I KNOW I need to add more. Many of you called it after my last post. And trust me, its not that I’m not aware of it.

I just cannot figure out how to make it:

1. Tolerable: I do not do well with any sort of cardiovascular indoor exercise. For the most part, I keep my bare bones cheap gym membership so I can lift weights. You put me on some indoor equipment? I struggle to breathe. This shit is why my indoor track PRs were wayyyy off what I could do inside. I had a handful of asthma attacks* in high school and all but 1 or 2 were indoors.

(As an aside, the actual diagnosis of exercise induced asthma has been disputed by two other doctors, one of which labeled it as “respiratory distress syndrome” – which i think is really the same thing while another suggested it was all tied to allergies. I’ve ignored it for years either way, but that’s a story for another day.)

2. Fit into my schedule: I am generally more comfortable working out at night. I CAN force myself to do this early, but the time it takes to get to the gym in the morning? Not really worth it. Its more productive if I get up at 5-5:30 to do an extra hour of work before I go into the office and people distract me.

And don’t suggest getting to work earlier. Even if I get in at 7, its no guarantee I get out before 7-8 PM as my company has a start-up feel to it and I generally feel guilty leaving before 6, even if I’ve been there for more than 8  hours. And no, I am not paid enough to deal with this.

3. Hard enough to give me any real benefit:  Thanks to “1″ and “2″, I’m often rushed when I am at the gym. This isn’t helped by the fact that some of those heavy cardio cross-training options like spin don’t work so well since it doesn’t help my IT bands.  And you know how I described my inability to run in the pool without a belt? I sink if I try. So am I really getting ANY benefit?

I know, I know. First world problems all around.

But the bottom line is that I’m actually TRYING to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I know far too many people who had some of these weird on/off issues with knees and hips in their 30s that are now unable to run in their 40s and I DON’T want that to happen to me because like I keep saying: RUNNING IS ALL I CAN HANDLE. Other forms of exercise make me stabby.

I can tolerate more miles now than I could a couple weeks ago and nothing is sliding out of place. These are good things.

But right now I’m thinking the odds of lining up at Boston this year? 50/50 at best and I am OKAY with this. That said, I want to at least try to keep my streak alive.

But how can I do this if I’m currently barely hitting 30 MPW and not doing anything to make up for the missing miles?

Fellow cross training haters? I’m listening.