Bio Freeze and Cheerios

Yes, I am completely aware of how long it took me to turn in the report on the workout of the century… But, please know that is really is because, until today, I couldn’t bare to lift my arms to type, and when I thought I had found that energy, my arms would cramp up in their crimped position, making it impossible to look unlike a seriously disabled person.

Let’s get real though, I have never (hands down, NEVER) felt such sore post-workout muscle pain. A few terrible hours passed where I may have slipped into thinking I had developed Fybroumayalgia. Or, that I had ripped the muscles. Actually, I thought something had popped and was swelling inside my elbow, because it was so tight it poked out when I squeezed my arm together. Ugh.

Well, the good news I do not have Fybroumayalgia. Or a torn muscle. Or a popped tendon. After a day of working in the yard at the lake (saying, ow, ow, ow over and over), four nights in a row of Bio Freeze (that stuff is no joke) and so many Multi Grain Cheerios that I may need to add that second to Garden Salsa Sunchips for food items I now need to take a break from, I am feeling normal. Ehhh, maybe not normal, but the intensity of my post-workout pain is dissipating. I can extend my arms full length, feeling only like I played an unnecessarily long tennis match at the beginning of the season when all those muscles get used again for the first time since the last season. I can use the bathroom without having to brace myself on the trip down. I can carry my workbag without the brief thought I picked up a bag of free weights instead.

And only now, because of that recovery, can I begin to honestly recount how this workout went.

One mile run – Easy, peasy. Mike beat me, but if you’ve EVER (been lucky enough to have) seen him on a treadmill, you know he covers at least four times as much ground than me with every step.

100 Pull-Ups – Modified, of course. My legs were in the chair, and I knocked out the first 25 all in a row. The downhill slide of my impeccable modified form started its descent here, as I started to feel my legs getting an equal workout. Needless to say, the sets shortened to a one off for the rest of the reps. Bottom line? I made it. (And you can’t even try to say modified is cheating when your arms feel the way mine have the last few days).

200 Push-Ups – Again, modified of course. And lookout out for seriously sprained wrists and popping elbow joints. I am not good at push-ups. I probably did 25 where my face got close enough to the floor to impress anyone, but I knocked out the remaining reps with Tony Horton as my subconscious coach, telling me that as long as I was still at it, it didn’t matter how low I could go. And again, I say, your arms don’t get sore like this when you weren’t doing something worth crediting.

(For the record, Mike’s arms weren’t sore at all)

300 squats. BAM. I rocked this. I repped my heart out plunging that big booty to the floor like a champ.

100 sit-ups. I am still not quite sure why I felt like we needed to add these in, but I do LOVE the feeling of sore abs. This would be the only part of my body that didn’t handicap me for the next couple days.

One Mile Run. Okay. I am thinking to myself it’s going to be hard, I mean, my legs are like jelly and I don’t really have confidence in a one mile run one-off, but at this point, my head is pounding, all my body is pretty much strawberry jelly and I don’t care what I have to do to just be freaking done with it.

But then we tried to skip down the stairs to cross that finish line only to BOTH realize that our legs may give up and send up tumbling down the stairs at a more rapid pace than Mike runs laps on that treadmill. The catch here is that I equally loss the use of my arms to crutch my way down, so it was one sloppy, tumble down two flights that left us both giggling (believe me, nothing was funny) with intense delirium and subtle dread.

THANK THE LORD – The treadmills at our apartment were taken. We sat on the bike, doubled our distance and canned that workout with as much false kudos as we could muster. We left for the grocery store where Mike whined down every aisle with evident exhaustion and I refused to stand up straight.

We’re doing it again this Thursday. My vote is that it will be WAY harder to knock out these reps. Mike thinks he won’t be nearly as sore. (those two muscles in his legs that got sore for a day). WE. SHALL. SEE. Or die sighing.