Human pin-cushion goes for a run.
*evil victorious laugh*
I went for an hour-long run today. That's right. An hour. Well, not all running - I am still horribly out of shape, after all, but consistent interval training!
First I'll say that I donated blood last night despite my body's selfish attempt to keep it all for itself. Not that I can really blame it - the first person stuck my left arm and put the needle straight through the vein, so she had to abort, pull the needle out and have me put immediate pressure on it, followed by ice. At least she caught it right away, unlike last time, where I did the whole donation with a perforated vein.
Meh, no big deal though, so I let them stick my other arm. My body was evidently cranky about it though, and refused to give up the blood without a fight. They need to be finished the draw in less than 15 minutes - it usually takes me about 6 minutes to fill the bag - and we were getting close to the wire and the bag still wasn't full. They kept readjusting the needle, trying to get better flow, and finally the head nurse came over, found a sweet spot, and just held the needle in place until they eked out a full bag, 30 seconds shy of the time limit. I guess I should also mention that I have a pretty low resting heartrate, enough so that sometimes the nurses make me do jumping jacks or something before they strap me in. I guess maybe that combined with not drinking enough water (I tried though! I thought I drank lots this time!) might have contributed to the slow going.
So now I've got a lovely toonie-sized bruise on each arm, one thanks to the perforation, the other because they rummaged around so much. But the whole rambling point of all of this was that I couldn't do my arm workout as I had initially planned because they warned me off of any heavy lifting for 48 hours.
So. A run it was, and an excellent opportunity to do a test run (so to speak) on my new shoes. I went up to the indoor track at the gym, which circles around the barbells and plate machines, and is, I have discovered, the place where the hardcore fitness freaks come to work out. YUM. Much better views in that room, boy. I might have to go up there to leer at sexy men work out more often!
The shoes were definitely interesting. My calves didn't know what to make of them at first, but once I got into it and repeatedly stretched the hell out of them the felt fine. The shoes were definitely comfortable, the whole time. It was like they were made just for my feet.
After a half hour - which already surpassed my usual 20 minute time limit before my knees tell me to fuck off - I felt the telltale twinge that is my knee politely informing me that if I keep running it's going to bitch about it for the next 3 days unless I stop right now. And I usually do, because I can't handle that much nagging. But not today! Today I got visibly pissed off, as I was hoping for a miracle and that these wonder-shoes would be an instant cure. And then I ran some more. I pushed my knee hard, just daring it to go to the next level.
Oh it tried. My knee tried so hard to cause me pain, and I laughed at it, because it couldn't do it. The virtuous revenant of the shoes (harhar) rose up and bitchslapped my knee, refusing to let it move enough to actually hurt. But oh, it tried.
And then, the final test. Once inflamed, going down stairs is excruciating. The gym is on the third floor. So I went down two flights of stairs, while my knee sulked in sullen silence. ME - 1. KNEE - 0.
I danced a jig and tried not to crow about it in the locker room. These shoes are definitely for keeping!
I went for an hour-long run today. That's right. An hour. Well, not all running - I am still horribly out of shape, after all, but consistent interval training!
First I'll say that I donated blood last night despite my body's selfish attempt to keep it all for itself. Not that I can really blame it - the first person stuck my left arm and put the needle straight through the vein, so she had to abort, pull the needle out and have me put immediate pressure on it, followed by ice. At least she caught it right away, unlike last time, where I did the whole donation with a perforated vein.
Meh, no big deal though, so I let them stick my other arm. My body was evidently cranky about it though, and refused to give up the blood without a fight. They need to be finished the draw in less than 15 minutes - it usually takes me about 6 minutes to fill the bag - and we were getting close to the wire and the bag still wasn't full. They kept readjusting the needle, trying to get better flow, and finally the head nurse came over, found a sweet spot, and just held the needle in place until they eked out a full bag, 30 seconds shy of the time limit. I guess I should also mention that I have a pretty low resting heartrate, enough so that sometimes the nurses make me do jumping jacks or something before they strap me in. I guess maybe that combined with not drinking enough water (I tried though! I thought I drank lots this time!) might have contributed to the slow going.
So now I've got a lovely toonie-sized bruise on each arm, one thanks to the perforation, the other because they rummaged around so much. But the whole rambling point of all of this was that I couldn't do my arm workout as I had initially planned because they warned me off of any heavy lifting for 48 hours.
So. A run it was, and an excellent opportunity to do a test run (so to speak) on my new shoes. I went up to the indoor track at the gym, which circles around the barbells and plate machines, and is, I have discovered, the place where the hardcore fitness freaks come to work out. YUM. Much better views in that room, boy. I might have to go up there to leer at sexy men work out more often!
The shoes were definitely interesting. My calves didn't know what to make of them at first, but once I got into it and repeatedly stretched the hell out of them the felt fine. The shoes were definitely comfortable, the whole time. It was like they were made just for my feet.
After a half hour - which already surpassed my usual 20 minute time limit before my knees tell me to fuck off - I felt the telltale twinge that is my knee politely informing me that if I keep running it's going to bitch about it for the next 3 days unless I stop right now. And I usually do, because I can't handle that much nagging. But not today! Today I got visibly pissed off, as I was hoping for a miracle and that these wonder-shoes would be an instant cure. And then I ran some more. I pushed my knee hard, just daring it to go to the next level.
Oh it tried. My knee tried so hard to cause me pain, and I laughed at it, because it couldn't do it. The virtuous revenant of the shoes (harhar) rose up and bitchslapped my knee, refusing to let it move enough to actually hurt. But oh, it tried.
And then, the final test. Once inflamed, going down stairs is excruciating. The gym is on the third floor. So I went down two flights of stairs, while my knee sulked in sullen silence. ME - 1. KNEE - 0.
I danced a jig and tried not to crow about it in the locker room. These shoes are definitely for keeping!