puffiness factor

the last couple weeks have been one of those time periods in life where everything seems to happen all at once. there has been a lot going on at school, at the house and with training. this has resulted in much less sleeping than is ideal and a whole lot of sore muscles.

with respect to the latter, housemate jack and i are on day 11 of p90x. everyday something different seems to be swollen on my body as my muscles try and adapt to this strength training business (don't worry, the trend seems to be that the muscles go back to normal size after a couple days). i am questioning daily if its worth it. i'm doing it on top of ramping my mileage back up in preparation for the rocky raccoon 100 in february, so i haven't been able to swim or bike as much because there are just not enough hours in the day.

in addition to the physical shock to the system, being in front of a tv everyday is kind of weird, and there's no outdoor component to the workouts at all *gasp* (thank goodness i'm still running). the point of mentioning all this is that the whole experience is making me acutely aware of some of the aspects of my normal training that i take for granted. some of those aspects have to do with being outside, having fresh air, seeing the seasons, the day and the enviroment change, having whole coversations with training buddies. and i can run the exact same loop everyday, but everyday it will be different in some way.

i got to guest lecture yesterday on running biomechanics yesterday. it was awesome. i talked a bit about how your foot moves when it hits the ground, and i found a youtube video that showed a subject running with and without shoes which i thought i'd post. fastforward 1 minute into the video and you'll see the barefoot running followed by the shod running. without shoes you tend to have more of a flatfoot ground contact whereas with shoes you tend to have more of a heelstrike, and the woman filmed in the video showed this exactly without being told what to do.

and yes, i know i need to get more pictures up...hopefully there will be some soon. just got my bridesmaid's dress for chris and julia's wedding and need to show it off!