Dead Legs

Wake up, Bex!: Sitting at my kitchen table with the newspaper yesterday, I realized that the Cherry Blossom 10-miler is on April 3. As in one week. Seven stinking short days. And that I haven't run 10 miles in one go since January.

"Damn," I thought. "Better get up and run 10 miles already."

Outside, rain crashed down ceaselessly, creating rivers of water in the streets. So I drove to the gym and pounded out 10 miles on the 'mill. I interspersed the run with a tiny bit of interval training. If you can call it that. I just made it up as I went along:

Mile 1: Warm-up between 9:31 and 9:05 pace
Mile 2: 7:30 pace
Mile 3: 8:00 pace
Miles 4-9.5: Btwn 8:35 and 8:57 pace
Mile 9.5-10: 8:19 pace

Total time: 1:25:47

One huge caveat: I took three water breaks, the first for 1 minute, the other two for 30 seconds each. So, had this been a race, you'd have to add 2 minutes to the total time. I'm not sure if I can run that fast this Sunday. The vagaries of weather, road and crowd conditions, plus a bad case of nerves, can throw a race.

I was totally beat at the end, by the way. Just. Wiped. Out.

But I hadn't done an upper-body workout in a couple of days, so after resting 15 minutes, I did 30 minutes of chest, back and arms work with free weights. Then I hobbled home and collapsed. Completely starved, I ate a bowl of pasta, with marinara sauce and chicken, the size of my head. Then some toast with Nutella and peanut butter. And I didn't share it with anybody.

Today, I did a lunchtime kickboxing class. My whole body's tired. But in a good way.

Model redux: Maybe I shouldn't have included that link to my doppelganger in my last post. I've gotten a couple of snarky e-mails. But I didn't do it to say, 'Hey, I look good!" Rather, I did it because while we think each of is unique, that's apparently not the case. At least in the physical sense. Sometimes, someone exists who shares some - or a lot - of the same or similar physical attributes as you.

And that, my friends, is totally freaky.