Thwarted

I went to bed before eleven!  Score 1 for discipline!

I couldn't sleep from 1:00 am until 3:00 am or so!  Score 1 for the Other Team, be they evil sleep-snatching fairies or whatever.  This wasn't due to Stupid Bird and Company though.  They were still asleep.  I have no idea what got me up.

I woke up again at 6:10, a little late, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to at least do an easy run.  The dog had a different opinion of the matter, and after performing the world's slowest and most pitiful crab walk down the hall, complete with bowed head and a beseeching sideways gaze, he got a pass.  I was on my own.

This went to my head.  Hey, I can go faster without him anyway!  Tempo time!  Unfortunately, I went out too fast and paid for it.  It was cool, only about 22C, but very humid.  Going out two miles only took 15 minutes or so; going back took 17 and I had to dig deeper for those because it was uphill and mostly on the soft shoulder due to increased traffic.  It rained all night and it was a slog.  I was miserable.  My mantra was, the faster you go, the sooner it ends.  Cadence cadence cadence.  If I want to do a tempo run on that road (and not on the shoulder), I have to get up earlier.

Still, 8:00ish/mile for a 4 mile tempo run under not the best conditions isn't shabby considering I'm out of shape.  I'll take it!

Then legs.  A bit of revamping going on.  Same weight, but I've been tweaking my deadlift form: I've been keeping my knees too straight.  Probably locked at least a little bit :(   It's been disorientating doing something slightly differently after umpteen years, but it'll pay off, and I'm starting to feel it where I should.  I'm constantly rechecking the movement in front of the bathroom mirror, and I wanted more practice with the weights today.  Plus, the squats felt good.  So I did 5X4 instead of 3X5.  Next time will hopefully be 5X5, but focus is on form.  I also added single calf raises to the mix.

And the daily double--I did it yesterday, and today.  On Sundays, I like to do as many of the pushups as I can in one go just to test, and I was shocked to do 20 after such a weak week.  Guess I'm well-rested.  My push up benchmark, my very old benchmark dating from over ten years ago when I was doing tryouts for the uni rowing team (didn't get in, turned down coxing for the guy's team, oh, why, stupid stupid girl? lol, but I lasted through three weeks of tryouts until the last erg test where I failed to pull 500m under 2:00)...anyway, memories, my benchmark is 60 +40.  100 pushups.  Can I ever do that again?

Meanwhile, I'm wiped.  I'm taking a break from an illustration project.  Y me no can draw? I'm crashing the characters I've already drawn a few times before.  My hand just won't trace the mental picture.   Next time, I'll save the stupid stuff like shading for days like this.