It is one o clock

And yoga class is at 4pm. I am attending that and then 2 mile walk with .25 mile jog in there. I know, that is a tiny amount of jogging, this is forcing myself to increase slowly to avoid debilitating shinsplints. This week .25 mile run, next week .50 and so on. When I get to 2 miles in a row I will start playing with speed and incline. Building up slowly on strength and running is one of the hardest things I've done. It's so frustrating not to just go balls out to happy exhaustion but it sucks even more to be unable to train at all and I'm in this for the long haul.

Yesterday I trained next to two women in the Women on Weights class. They were kind of pathetic as far as lifting goes, not referring to the amount of weight but the effort and lousy form. Hell, lift the little bar but at least squat it all the way down, you know? One had run a half-marathon that weekend her friend informed me, and as a wanna-be runner I was mildly impressed. It's kind of mind-blowing that a human body can run 14 miles and yet be so incredibly weak. They started talking diet. One of the women whom I've seen in the gym many times, always running and doing cardio expressed dissatisfaction at her body and said it was obviously her diet as she trained like a fiend. The half-marathon friend was super-skinny, but in an unhealthy way that made you want to see if she was okay rather then the hot super-model way.

Super-skinny woman is on a really low-carb diet and not skinny woman was depressed that that might be the only way for her to reduce down to her desired shape. The thing about all of this was, that along with me there was another female weightlifter in the gym, who's figure they were admiring along with her strength. Wouldn't you think that might make the brain say, hey maybe getting stronger will help my body look more the way I want it to look? I would, hell that was part of the reason I started lifting in the first place (see title of this blog) along with stronger bones and increased lean mass. But no, the two women loved weightlifting girls body, said they could never be that strong, and made plans to take more cardio classes together. It was not the time to go into a full-blown lecture about increasing lean body mass through weightlifting to improve body shape and enable it to burn more calories instead of depriving oneself more and more while shrinking away into bone and skin. Or maybe it was and I'm just a coward.

In a way I can see where they were coming from, as the lifting they were doing was ineffective and they had paid for 6 weeks or so of the lifting classes without much result, so may as well give it up. Also, you are going to do what you like, thus my signing up for the trail run early in the year to force myself out of my comfort zone. On the other hand i wasn't exactly gung-ho about yoga in the beginning despite being aware of the benefits in stretching one's body, concentrating on the breath and meditating. It took a long time of muscle stiffness before I finally did something about it. I may never be particualrly good at yoga, but that does not matter, being able to walk around like a human should, to bend and stretch and turn and have full range of motion, to watch TV without begging for a leg rub makes it worth the schedule inconvienence. Evolving, slowly but surely.