MCM Training [Week 9]

     Currently bawling my eyes out because my baby brother is at school for his first day of junior year today. I cannot believe it! It is a good thing I am four hours away or else I would’ve driven him crazy with pictures this morning. 😉 He’s even old enough to have a friend drive him to school. AH!

I always get so emotional about “milestones” in both of my brother’s lives, so that makes me wonder how I will act when I have children of my own. Hopefully I am not an emotional mess their entire lives! Hahaha

Welcome to Week 2 of The Diaries of Kylie’s Injury. If you are new around here, hello. 🙂 Right now, I am training for the Marine Corps Marathon, which is happening in October. Three weeks ago, I was feeling a nagging pain in my leg that I thought were shin splints. Two weeks ago, I had an x-ray and found out that I have a tibial stress reaction, which is basically the start of a stress fracture. The doctor put me on bed rest (LOL not really) and I have been riding the stationary bike. More specifically, the bike where your feet pedal in front of you. That is the exercise I am permitted to do.

Sigh.

Do you see the “0:09”? That is 9 seconds until 60 minutes is OVER! I have been trying very hard to ride for an hour, but I usually cannot mentally handle it. This past week, I stayed entertained by “saving” social media until it was time to work out so I had a ton of Instagram posts to scroll past. 😉 This worked well on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday! By Thursday, my brain figured out what I was doing and even Instagram couldn’t save the day. (The doctor never said I had to ride for a certain amount of time, it was just my personal goal to ride for an hour!) So on Thursday, I rode for 30 minutes and then did this strength workout I found on Pinterest.

You do these exercises as supersets for 8 reps each. So you do 8 dumbbell goblet squats followed by 8 bent over rows, then you rest for 30 seconds. Next, you do 8 suitcase deadlifts followed by 8 dumbbell overhead presses, then rest for 30 seconds. The only time you rest otherwise is to switch out your weights! According to this pin, you are supposed to repeat these supersets for 15 minutes. Oh my gosh. Apparently, I haven’t done squats in a while because I am still walking like a baby deer four days later. Hahaha

Exercise this week has also looked like 30 minutes on the bike followed by a half mile walk to the nearest Pinkberry to hang out with my friend Sarah. 🙂 I never knew about Pinkberry until I moved to this area, but I LOVE it! It is much different than other frozen yogurt I have had in the past. It actually tastes like yogurt! Ha! In my experience, frozen yogurt is just like soft-serve ice cream. Pinkberry still has all the delicious toppings, but they add them for you. On this night, I got vanilla bean frozen yogurt with cheesecake bites, cookie dough bites, and almond crunch. Because #healthy.

On Friday, I received some good news about my Master’s seminar paper (finally accepted after lots of revisions!) so I decided I was going to celebrate by going for a jog. Not a run. A simple jog. Well, I don’t know how to jog…because I clocked a 9 minute mile. And I felt a dull ache in my leg at 0.52 miles and did not stop so…runners are also really smart.

While I walked home and felt sorry for myself for not feeling 100% on this run, I took a picture of this fountain. Which now, in this picture, looks like a statue of a pyramid. But I promise it’s a fountain and there were kids splashing around. 🙂 I left them out of the photo ha!

I couldn’t let Friday feel like a complete fail, so when I got back home, I went into the gym. In my personal opinion, injuries come when I am slacking off in other areas of exercise…such as strength training. On Friday after my not-so-successful jog/run, I did lots of core work, including these planks where my arms are flat on the ground. Just turning your arm over and putting your palms flat on the floor makes the plank position so much more challenging!

These are my running (or resting) rambles for the week. I feel like I am metaphorically “on the bench” in the running game. What kind of exercise do you like to do when you are on the bench?! I am looking forward to doing some other low intensity workouts this week to mix it up! All ideas are welcome and appreciated. 🙂

Happy Monday!