Progress

It feels great to be heading into my fourth week of exercising 6 days a week. Yesterday on my 8 mile run (which I did with Lebihui again), I was surprised to find myself struggling to slow down enough to stay with him. This is shocking to me for several reasons: for one, he's always been a lot faster than I am. Secondly, he's a guy, and thirdly he has been putting in solid training 2-3 times a week - the same training that last year resulted in both of us getting substantially faster. I'm thinking maybe he was unusually tired yesterday and it was a fluke - I guess we'll find out next week.

I'm starting to get the itch to see just what I can do. With four weeks behind me I am noticing substantial flexibility and energy gains. I was absolutely delighted to feel like I could run forever on yesterday's 8 mile run and the biggest hill on the loop felt only slightly effortful. Last week, with minimal sleep I found myself almost dropping my running partner on a few intervals - they hurt like hell but in a way that felt strangely sustainable (like I could do it again and not feel like death the next day). At Saturday's yoga class I didn't feel any flexibility imbalances during down dog and even felt my back starting to loosen up in extensions. The problems with my L3-L5 usually make me want to scream and cry but this week it didn't!

The weakest part of my training is still Body Pump but I'm sticking with it and the gains will come. Even there my painful shoulder from last week doesn't seem to be a problem as long as I pay attention and back off of the push-ups when I feel a tweek.

So yeah, I'm seeing my body respond to the training and I'm ready to start throwing down some harder challenges for myself. In a few weeks I'm heading to 3 weeks of training for work and I think that will probably be where the challenge will happen.