RUNNING...Cross Training, Is It Really Necessary?

I’ve always been one to just get my miles in. If I were following a training schedule, I would never stick to it religiously. Tempo runs, speed work, or cross training rarely happened. I’d just Lace Up And RUN! But then I started to notice that I was feeling out of shape. My runs were no longer challenging. I was consistently working the same muscle groups, never swaying from the same motions. As any athlete will tell you, at some point, there is no longer a benefit.

A friend had convinced me to come work out with her. She loved kettle bells and was willing to do some sessions with me. I knew I needed to mix it up a bit, and I couldn’t kick a gift horse in the mouth (as they say). So a couple Mondays ago we met for the first time. That first workout was awesome! I came out of there feeling like Rocky Balboa on the Russian Farm in Rocky IV. I couldn’t believe how much fun it was and that I had been denying myself this other outlet for sweating it out. I was hitting a tractor tire with a sledgehammer…shaking those large ropes like you see on The Biggest Loser…and doing pull-ups with the help of a rubber strap under my one knee. I felt GREAT! I hadn’t worked those muscles in years…truly, years!

As if to nonverbally say: last time was easy, this is the real workout…the second time we met, I was like “Holy Crap”! I could barely walk for a week! My thighs hadn’t screamed like that since my Marathon in ‘08. The whole downward movement…walking down steps, sitting down on the toilet…DOWN SUCKED!!! Two Mondays went by before us getting together again. Thankfully!!! Because it took me that long to recover to normal walking and stance, yet here I was again...back for more!

Walking lunges while holding kettle bells over my head…slamming 10lb. medicine balls to the ground and squatting to pick them back up for a round of 10…plank rows with 12lb. kettle bells…and my favorite move of all: “BURPIES”!!! I don’t know how to spell it, and I surely don’t know how to put it in writing to make you fully appreciate the fatigue and torture it forced upon me. If someone were to say the word BURPIES to me, I’d be looking for the dancing leprechaun and a pint of Guiness! Not huffing and puffing, begging for mercy, because to do these at the end of a workout is no doubt part of a Navy Seal truth serum strategy!

So here I am again, two days after a Monday workout, walking around in agony as if every muscle in my body is in full permanent contraction! I think my ER patients yesterday were privately requesting: “please don’t give me the nurse with the perpetual grimace on her face…is she OK?”

I did though make myself run today… hoping to loosen things up, but a pathetic 3 miles was all I could muster. I defaulted to the treadmill thinking that having the option to pull the cord and roll off, would be better than the Township mistaking me for a dead deer on the side of the road, and placing a large “X” on my butt! Thankfully, I have a few more days to detox my lactic acid before we meet again on Monday and I say: “please miss, may I have another”!

Lace Up And RUN!