Damn you, abdominal incision. (148.4)

Situation: As of two weeks ago, I was still feeling a fair bit of pain internally from my c-section. I assumed that this was normal and ignored it. Then I had some visitors and quit doing P90 for a week. After that week, the pain was nearly entirely gone.
Hypothesis: Maybe the intense-ish workouts were slowing down the healing.
Action: Quit doing P90 for a little bit until the pain is completely gone, then add it back in slowly, so as not to damage myself. I think the cardio/abs bit was the worst offender, so I'll add the weights portion back in first, since I was pretty pleased with my newfound ability to do a respectable girl push-up.

C25K is still a go, however. I'm completely done with the interval workouts (sad! I liked those) and am about to go run for 28 minutes whenever Noah gets home. Huzzah!

On the road again.... (146.8)

Minor victory of the week: staying on track even with excuses to not stay on track. To rephrase: not letting myself use visitors as an excuse to eat a shitload of pie and stop exercising. I did put the P90 on hold (and feel weak and puny at the moment, I might add - can't wait to start lifting teeny weights again), but I ate reasonable amounts of relatively healthy things and kept up with the c25k. Yesterday I even persuaded Noah to go run with me, since we had helpful baby-watching people around.

That was a bit different from my normal runs, I must say. Aside from the car troubles (nothing like heaving your sweaty self to the car only to find that it is unwilling to carry you home, eh?), it was pretty fun, but quite hard. I ran 25 minutes, which I'd already done once on Friday, but it was a lot harder yesterday, possibly due to the increased heat or maybe to the fact that Voiceover Guy wasn't telling me how much longer I had to go every two minutes. Anyway, having Noah along was rather entertaining. He's in much better shape than I am, but doesn't have the attention span to just jog along for half an hour, so he'd sprint past me, walk until I'd passed him by, sprint some more, etc. He refrained from ass-grabbing for the most part, but, well, he IS a man, you know. Can't expect too much.

Anyway, the past week was a fun break from the norm, but I should be back in my regular routine shortly. Oh, and that number up there? You see that? 4.2 pounds to go until I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight.

Twenty minutes. (150.6)

That's how long I ran today. That's longer than I've ever run in my entire adult life. It actually was better than I expected. The first five minutes were wicked hard, but after that it was actually relatively easy. For the first time, I'm solidly convinced I'll be able to finish this thing and actually run 5k. To that end, I'm registering for a local 5k on September 10th. Eeeeek.

Minor updates.

C25K week 4 went okay. The first day was hard. The second day was harder. The third day was really easy. I can't explain it - maybe the weather? Or maybe my legs wised up and decided to be all mighty and stoic on Friday. Who knows? Regardless, I'm going to go ahead and give week 5 a shot today.

Week five looks pretty scary, honestly. Week four is as far as I got when I tried C25K before getting knocked up, so this is all uncharted territory. Day one should be pretty easy - just three intervals of five-minute runs, which isn't that much different from week four. No worries about today. Day two is two intervals of eight-minute runs, which I should be able to do, but it'll be tough. Day three is a twenty-minute run, and I really don't know if I can do it. I'll give it my best shot, though, and if I can't quite do it, I'll just repeat the week. No problem, no big deal, no stress. No anxiety-induced hyperventilating.

Week two of P90 went just fine. I dropped the ab portion on Saturday because my incision site seemed like it might protest, but otherwise everything was completed just as the doctor Tony Horton ordered. I upped the weights on a couple of exercises today from 5 lb to 7.5 lb, so I feel marginally less pathetic. Shoulder flies continue to be my nemesis, but girl push-ups are totally my bitch (until I get to more than five reps, in which case I turn into a wobbling weakling).

Made the mistake of having half a pan of deeeeeeeelicious homemade mac 'n' cheese for breakfast this morning, thus using up half of my caloric allotment for the day. Must think of something sensible for supper. Chicken curry, maybe. Yum.

W4D1. (151.4)

Brief update on c25k - I ran week 4 day 1 yesterday (two three-minute runs, two five-minute runs), and it actually worked. Surprise, surprise. I wasn't even completely totaled at the end! It was really hard (possibly because I'd done weights ten minutes before starting), but I finished it and probably could've kept going for a little while. I worked out my time, and it turned out that I'd gone two miles in twenty-six minutes (16 minutes running, 10 minutes walking), which is a wee bit shy of five miles per hour - not a bad average, considering the amount of walking in there. I'd guess my running pace is about 6 mph (10 min/mile), which is considerably faster than I thought I was going. Not bad, folks. Not bad at all.