Days 50 & Day 51

DVD - Max Interval Circuit (Day 50)
DVD - Max Interval Plyo (Day 51)

It's like I have Senioritis or something. You know what I mean? That point in high school during you final semester of Senior year after you've sent off your college applications and are waiting to hear which of the schools have accepted you, when you're sort of over the whole rigmarole of classes and high school drama and just want the rest of your life to start?

That's about where I'm at with Insanity.

As you know if you’ve been following along, for the past week or so it has been either hard to motivate myself to get started or harder to push myself physically. I’m so close to the end that I’m starting to imagine life after Insanity, and how much I am going to relish being able to come home from work and just collapse, at least a couple of days a week. When I think like that, the devil and angel appear on my shoulder, each whispering a variety of enticements that boil down to, respectively, “It’ll be ok just this once“ and “but you made a commitment!”

The devil’s enticements are appealing, especially now that I am sore all of the time. My muscles and joints join the devil in her chorus with their litany of constant, dull ache. My arms are sore, my legs are sore. Deep inside my back is sore. When I sit for too long and get up to walk it takes a minute for back to completely straighten and it feels like I creak when I walk. Sometimes, walking up stairs feels like it requires Herculean effort on my part. The other day, I was eating breakfast at a table that was slightly too high for my chair and my bicep and tricep objected with every scoop and lift of my fork. I’m sore like I was that entire first week of Insanity.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why are you still doing it?”.

Because when it comes right down to it, the angel always wins.

The thing is, I’m supposed to be sore right now. I’ve read a few blogs by people who have completed Insanity or who are doing it right now, and each of the bloggers has mentioned a constant soreness while following this set of DVDs. Knowing I’m not alone in my level of discomfort somehow makes it easier for me. Pain has been something I’ve always been really good at managing, and quite bluntly, I don’t want to be the wimp who gave up this close to the end because it hurt a little too much. Something about failure so close to the end after I’ve pushed myself this far is a lot less palatable than if I’d just given up at the outset. After all, I have less than 2 weeks of this daily regime left. If it were longer, if I were going to have to exist in a state of permanent dull ache, I would reconsider my commitment. But it isn’t longer.

In spite of my soreness, I have noticed positive gains in my stamina and endurance. It may hurt my muscles and joints to run up a flight of stairs (or two, as is the case at the BART station closest to my work), but my heart rate barely raises and I am not even really very winded. Tonight (2/23) I ran the last two blocks from BART to my place as I’d neglected to take an umbrella because it wasn’t raining when I left for work and got caught in a deluge trying to get home. When I reached my place, I was wet and cold, but my heart and breathing rates were mostly normal.

Clearly my resolve to complete the 63-day Insanity program is in tact (especially when I'm sitting here poking away at a keyboard). I'm just having some trouble pushing my body through the workouts and keeping my willpower steady in the early moments when I look at the workout clock and realize I have more than 45 minutes to go. The devil's reasoning is strong at these times. These last two nights I've found myself almost giving up after the stretch as the meat of the workout began. Worse, I also found myself taking breaks during the warm-up intervals, which is a back slide in my endurance.

I'm pretty sure it's more than Senioritis. I've noticed that I haven't been as diligent about getting out of the office right at 5:00 pm before the past few workouts - more like 5:30 or later. If I'm not leaving late, I'm making a brief stop that makes my commute start later. I've been getting home around 6:30, so it's closer to 6:45 by the time I get into the workout. 45 minutes later doesn't seem like much when you just think about it, but it seems like when I get started later I don't have as much energy to push myself through it physically or mentally.

I have 10 more workouts between tomorrow and day 63, 7 of which are more Max workouts (the other 3 are the recovery DVD and Cardio Power & Resistance). I want to go out strong, giving each workout my all without any excuses or impediments. In this vein, I am going to start enforcing my exit from work immediately at 5:00 like I did for the first month of Insanity when the workouts were shorter. I am going to go back to taking ibuprofen like they recommend to help with the constant aching. Hopefully, these minor adjustments will improve my overall performance.