the trick is to keep breathing

I've been doing moderately better at getting my workouts in. I say 'moderately' because I've been hampered by my neck -- I've had the stabbing can't-turn-my-head type of pain on and off but more or less consistently for the last 6 weeks. Some days my neck will move and it's just pain, maybe a 4 on the pain scale; other days it locks up and I can't look over my shoulder or touch my ear to my shoulder, and that's somewhere like an 8 or 9. It's easy for me to ignore lower levels of pain - I haven't had a pain-free day in at least seven years - but this is severe and hampering enough that I'm finally taking steps to get it looked at. My chiropractor says it's a pinched nerve. My doctor gets to weigh in this afternoon. More on that later; the point is, I've been fighting whatever this injury/malady is, and many days, I don't feel right doing any kind of full workout when I'm in that much pain.

The real point of this post is that I'm thinking of switching gyms.

Right now I'm a member of RPFitness and I don't really have any problems with it. It's a very nice gym. The equipment is well-kept, it's rarely too crowded to do what you want to do, and it's about $38/month. They offer some classes for free (yoga, some body pump type classes, spinning), and some you have to pay for (the "FIT" classes, which are kind of like 30 minutes of BodyRock with a trainer), but with my schedule my ability to attend classes is limited. Right now I only visit once, maybe twice a week, to use their weight machines, freeweights, and other equipment, because I'm running outside so much. I've already been considering alternatives, because $38/month is only a dollar a day from one point of view, but if I only go 4-8 times a month, isn't there some other way I can do those exercises and not pay for it? You know?

The new gym that I'm looking at is $53/month, but it has a pool. Recently, for whatever reason, I've really been missing swimming. I was a state-level varsity swimmer for all four years in high school, and I taught swim lessons during the summers I was a lifeguard to help put myself through school. I love swimming, I always have, and as I get older and these fucking injuries get worse and worse, I've started thinking about it more and more. I may have come to terms with what running does for my body but that doesn't mean I like it. At all. And I won't know until I try, but since swimming is a known quantity, a known positive, I feel like I'd be more likely to stick with a workout routine that incorporated swimming than I have been with running - I can train for races, but I've proven that left to my own devices I rarely run (until I start feeling gross). Consistency has always been my problem and it's stupid to assume that will just go away with a simple switch, but at the same time, if it's something I enjoy more, I should be less likely to skip it.

So for $15/month more I would have everything I have now, plus access to a track, plus access to a pool. And a hot tub and sauna.

In September I'll be done with my race commitments, and I have really been thinking about putting running on the back burner and trying three months of using swimming as my cardio. I called RPFitness, and I can actually "suspend" my account for up to three months - I won't use their gym and won't pay for a three-month period, but if I decide to go back, I can do so without having to pay their initiation/enrollment fee again since my account was suspended rather than cancelled.

Of course, to join the other gym I will have to pay an enrollment fee, which is... usually it's something like $275 which is ha ha ha no, but right now they're running a deal until the end of August, and the fee is very highly discounted. So on one hand right now seems like a great time to try it out - I can suspend my RPF membership, pay a lower fee, try the other gym out for 3 months, and make a decision in November.

On the other hand: I have to do it before the end of August, and the Akron Marathon Relay we always run is at the end of September, so in September I'll still be heavily running because I'll be training for the race. Also, even the discounted enrollment fee is still a lot of money and I won't get that back, whether I stick with the new gym or return to the old: it's lost on the chance that I'll like this gym better. Even though I have a good job and solid savings, poor!Sev still lives in my backbrain, and I don't like just throwing money around simply because I have it available.

( Pros and Cons because I love lists )


So that's what I'm musing on today.

The Akron Marathon (Relay) is only 2 days away! I am starting to get excited/nervous about it -- last week I was ready to just have it over and done with, but now, I'm preoccupied with how I am going to do and whether the 200 miles of training I've put in are going to show up or not.

Jeff and I both got free shirts from Bridgestone, though - Bridgestone's a sponsor of this race, and because we're employees, we get Bridgestone running shirts. I will, of course, be running in my J-Squad shirt, but I will never say no to a free tech shirt. They're really nice. (That means that for this one race, I'll have gotten 3 shirts: the official Akron one, the Bridgestone one, and our Team J-Squad one. Sweet!)

I can't decide how confident I am about the race. I did my half marathon (13.1 miles) at a 10:00/mile, so I should be faster than that for a leg that's only 7.9 miles, plus I have trained a lot since then. However, the training has been a lot of long slow miles, and when I do faster tempo runs, I feel like I'm going to die - and they're only 4 miles long. So I have absolutely no idea how to predict my performance. My 'goals' are, in order:

• Beat last year's time of 81 minutes
• 75 minutes (~9:30/mile)
• 73 minutes (minus one minute per mile from last year)
• 71 minutes (~9:00/mile)

It may sound dumb to have this many goals, but I am pretty sensitive to "how I am doing" when I'm running. If I feel like I'm doing well, I get motivated to go harder. If I feel like I'm going poorly, I get upset, and that interferes with my breathing and makes me run worse. So, I try to have levels of goals that include things I am pretty sure I can do, so that I don't get too upset. Running is just as much about the mental as it is about the physical, you know.

I've been trying to go to bed early-ish this week, and tonight and tomorrow I'll be in bed very early. #loser Then again, I have to be up at balls-o-clock on Saturday. #yuck

Anyway, wish me luck! Soon you'll all be free from my talk about training, ha ha ha.

I've run over 100 miles in 2010.

More accurately, I've run over 100 miles since I started keeping track, which was after Ohayocon.

100 miles is a lot!

I had a longer post but my day hath exploded in fire and brimstone (more accurately: long meetings and drum-drying) and thus I will just post a big giant YAY @ SELF.