Today was a long full day at work (they're all feeling like long full days right now), and I walked home under spitting gray skies feeling tired and sick. I walked in the door and took a COVID test. But I had told Pete that we could climb today, so when my test was negative I changed into workout clothes and headed off, a little reluctantly, to the climbing gym.
After 45 minutes at the gym I felt seven million times better -- perky, upbeat, singing happy songs about dinner. This always seems a little weird to me. I can read about the mood-boosting effects of exercise, but when my own personal mood is boosted by exercise I'm always like, "Wait, this is not fair. Why can't I get my mood boosted by lying on the couch with a bag of Lindor truffles?"
I am shifting my focus back toward endurance training for the first time in a while. It feels pretty terrible right now, but bodies are adaptable and so I am just going to lean into the terrible. My plan is to dial back my lower-body weight-training to about once a week. I'm not willing to give up deadlifting, because nothing else makes me feel quite as mighty, but I find it very tricky to combine tough lifting sessions and tough running sessions. So: for a while I am going to run more and lift less, with the goal of maintaining my current level of strength while also getting enough rest to absorb the benefits of my running workouts.
Pete and I have been climbing more lately, which I am counting as a strength + cardio + flexibility cross-training session. I am trying not to focus on the ground I lost over the pandemic; I'm just going to try to keep nudging it forward from where I am.
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