Soreness

If you are active, you will eventually experience muscle tightness and/or soreness. It usually starts the day after fitness that has pushed past your threshold. It just means that your muscles are working to adapt to the new level of activity. It has an official name of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) but it's not nearly as serious as that. If you're new to fitness, this soreness may seem like a bad thing, but if you can move and go about your normal daily life, it's nothing to worry about. It occurs to everyone, including seasoned athletes. There are ways to lessen and/or prevent this, but if that's forgotten or doesn't eliminate the problem, you can help yourself out after it has set in.

To prevent DOMS:
Take a cold shower or bath right after the exercise. This may sound awful and counter-intuitive, but it will really help prevent soreness.
Make sure you're hydrating and sleeping enough. These are key to helping your body heal.

To ease symptoms of DOMS:
You can gently work the muscles that are sore. If you are sore from running, try a short walk or bike ride.
You can stretch the sore muscles. This may remove the tightness and help the discomfort.
You can take a mild painkiller, but only if you can't deal with the pain. They delay healing, so will actually prolong the DOMS.

Day 9D--Off week

Well, I missed an entire week of working out. It was my birthday and then I got a cold that knocked me on my butt and standing up was too hard. I thought about the exercise I was missing, but was too out of it to actually do anything.

I went back at it today, and will probably be sore tomorrow. Even with the week off, I didn't really lose much progress on any of my exercises. I was going to add one today, but don't want to overdo it anymore. Instead, I will be doing a ton of cardio today. I plan on breaking out the Wii games that I know will burn some calories and fat. I haven't used the Cardio Workout in a while, so I think I'll try that out again. It's mostly boxing, but it works the abs, too. Plus, it's fun to punch.

Day 8D--progress

My thighs and butt feel much tighter. I am also experiencing some soreness from the exercises. That is why I didn't add any new exercises the last two days. I will add some next week.

Tonight's my first time I'm bowling since I was on crutches. I'm hoping that will add some cardio and upper body work to my days.

Day 3D--Butt

The third exercise I will be adding is the bridge. I'd describe it like a pelvic thrust when you're laying down in sit up position. It mainly works the glutes and hamstrings, otherwise known as the butt. It also works the quadriceps, abdominals and shoulders as supporting medicines. This is another exercise that can be done quickly.

My abs are still sore from yesterday, so my plank time took a backwards step. I love that I can feel the exercises working, even if the chart doesn't reflect that.

I can't find a record time for the bridge, but did find one for the wall sit. Dr. Thienna Ho once held it for 11 hours and 5 minutes. I thought 11 minutes sounded ridiculously long and impressive. I guess I have a new goal to shoot for. Although, 11 hours of sitting would be super boring. I could watch the director's cut of all the LOTR movies in that time. Not that I would be any less bored if I did that.

Day 74C--16 Miles

That is how far I ran on Saturday. A new personal record in both time and distance. Luckily, the heat and humidity broke a bit, so I didn't want to die right away. I did want to die about mile 12, though. My legs were starting to get super sore and did not want to keep going. The only thing that got me through the rest of the run was sheer stubbornness. I was not going to fail at my run. Here are my mile splits:
14:08--mile 1 (I have no idea why this was so slow.)
11:40--mile 2
11:36--mile 3
11:34--mile 4
12:23--mile 5
15:10--mile 6 (this included our first gatorade/water stop)
11:24--mile 7
11:43--mile 8
12:02--mile 9
12:48--mile 10
14:06--mile 11 (our second gatorade/water stop. Also lots of stretching)
13:11--mile 12
12:07--mile 13
13:51--mile 14 (third gatorade/water stop with hosing off.)
12:44--mile 15
11:49--mile 16

Because of the heat, we ran a 4:1 interval, instead of 5:1, so our overall pace was slower. Although, looking at the splits, I see that miles that we didn't stop for food or water were run at our normal 11:30 pace.

I wanted to cry when the run was done. My legs were so sore that driving was difficult. I had a hard time moving my right leg between the gas and the brake. I had to push it with my hand. Luckily, I was in really slow traffic and a short drive, so I didn't have to switch back and forth very often. I went home and spent much of the next hour soaking in a cold bath, which helped a lot. I was able to get out of the house later that day and walk to the train & to the movies.


This weekend's run has led me to discover a new muscle. It's commonly called the IT band, which is short for iliotibial band. I think mine became problematic from walking and running unevenly because of my tight calves. I will be spending the next few days stretching that out so I can continue to run comfortable. I will also make sure to keep my calves and thighs stretched so they don't put excess stress on my IT band.

Day 70C--Calves

I've mentioned my tight calves before and I had gotten used to them. They've been tight since I started training at the beginning of May. Yesterday, my calves took a turn for the worse. Instead of just being tight and uncomfortable when I walked or ran, they are now sore all the time. I'm visibly limping all the time. My right knee & hip are starting to hurt because of the limping caused by my tight left calf. I have called the physical therapists that work with T2 and hope they can help me out. I don't want to miss tomorrow's 7 mile run, but I don't want to make things worse and miss the 16 mile run next week.

Day 42C--Running

I ran my maintenance run yesterday. Went back to my route from last year. It's exactly 3.1 miles and, because it goes around a cemetery, has few street lights. I ran it in 33 minutes, which isn't great, but not too bad considering how sore/tight my calves were. I stopped at least once on the route to stretch my calves on the run and spent about 10 minutes doing nothing but stretching and massaging my calves when I finished my run. Luckily, they seem to be almost normal today, so they shouldn't pose any issues tomorrow when I run 5 miles with my pace group.

The weather for tomorrow morning's run looks ok. 30% chance of rain, but 62 degrees. I think I'd rather have rain with warmth than the cold, but dry weather I ran in last Saturday. Tomorrow will be the last group run under an hour. I'm really glad I like the two women in my pace group. T2 doesn't allow headphones during runs so conversation is a must. It makes the runs go quickly, but if I didn't like my group, I think it would make the runs drag and be miserable. I even ran into one of my pace group members when I was starting on my run yesterday. It was a nice bit of motivation.

Day 40C--Running

I ran some last night and did some speed work on the nearby track. Unfortunately, I thought the track was longer than it was. I ran fast, but walked way too much in between my bursts of running. It was also hard because my calves were really tight from the day before. They're still really, really tight today. I've spent a lot of time the last two days stretching out my calves. I think my yoga will help with that a bit tonight.

Day 8C--recovery

I didn't run at all yesterday. I'm still recovering from Wednesday's run. I keep putting Neosporin on my chafing injuries, but they still hurt, especially when I get soap in them. I wasn't sore or stiff at all yesterday, but I am today. My right hamstring is really tight and feels like it wants to cramp up. I hope I can get a run in tomorrow morning before the games begin.
I've been thinking about Elizabeth Taylor a lot the last few days. It's been hard to avoid all the news and pictures. I always loved her; she was beautiful and talented. Also admired her tenacity. She lost her husband in a plane crash, had tons of personal illness and lost a dear friend to AIDS. Her dedication to AIDS was early and unending. That became her passion, and keeping that in mind has been pushing me to ask for donations to my race, even though I hate doing that.
Sort of related to that, I want the dress she's wearing in this photo. I may hire my seamstress friends to make it for me as a prize for finishing the marathon.

Day 7B--Soreness

I have been using hand weights with the EA Active. Mostly, I've been using the three and five pound weights. I went up to the eight pound weights on some of the biceps and triceps exercises. I also used the lightest hand weights (somewhere between one or two pounds) on the boxing and sit-ups. I can feel it all today, and it's a good feeling. Yes, I'm sore, but in that I kicked some ass way, rather than an I overdid it way. Even if I didn't lose any weight, I feel better for having worked out hard last night.

Day 49--Confusion

I know that real exercise can be achieved with the Wii, yet I'm surprised when using the Wii leads to next day soreness. My guilt over the food on Saturday, led to extra cardio on Sunday. I did my regular workout as part of the 30 day challenge, then did the Wii Fit Island Cycling on Advanced. I gave up after finding 18 of 20 flags. That's better than last time when I gave up after 15, but I would really like to find them all. It took me about 47 minutes to find as many as I did, and I'm feeling it today. To "pedal" the bike, you step up and down. I don't move my whole foot to do this, though. I just move my heels up & down. That works out to 47 minutes of calf raises. My calves are mooing today. I also did 30 minutes of free step last night, but that is not where the soreness and stiffness are coming from. I'm hoping that the extra work did something for my weight in addition to the calf pain.

Day 12--Rest day

The third day of the 30 day challenge is a rest day. I'm very thankful for that because my ass hurts. All of the forward, reverse and side lunges yesterday really worked my muscles. OW!! I did do some yoga, just to stretch out my sore muscles. I'm going to try to do the yoga poses every day. I would really like to be able to touch my toes without having to bend my knees.

On a good note, my weight is down to 132 1/2. I'm going to leave 134 as the ceiling, though. I think I may have just been a bit low on my calories yesterday.