One lump...or two?

Or maybe they're more like humps...

source

After my ambitious and successful workout week capped by my happy birthday celebration (with hoopty cake!), I awoke Monday with a vicious migraine...which I didn't mention in yesterday's post...denial :(  I think I've said before that when I get a migraine (usually once or twice a month) it will last for 2 days. There's nothing I can take or do once it's there except ride it out. Needless to say, I was pissed. I really wanted my awesome last week to serve as a springboard into my training plan. I think the migraine was at least partially responsible for my 5-hour sofa-rafting on Monday.

I was able to somehow rally that evening to go meet one of my climbing partners. It felt good to get off of the sofa and out of the house. I even ran into my oldest stepson at the gym! It was nice to see him...we don't see each other often enough. Anyway... my partner and I climbed for roughly 90 minutes after which I decided to muddle my way through a little bit on the elliptical. Those 30 minutes were probably the clearest I felt that whole day. Take-away from the experience: working out almost always makes you feel better.

When yesterday started off with Day 2 that same nausea-exhaustion-migraine and no hope of holing up in the house all day (I had volunteered to serve as a driver/chaperone for Miss C's preschool trip to the Little Farm), I actually cried. Then I did what I do... I soldiered on. Once home after the field trip, I passed out on the sofa for two hours before I needed to go fetch kids from their schools. I started fretting about my workout while on this drive. "Hills" were what the schedule called for... "6 x hills". For the next couple of hours, I worked out a rationale for bailing on any sort of workout. Then I convinced myself that some StairMaster work could sub in. (Recalling yesterday's take-away). Then I realized that I really wanted to just be outside in the fresh air...but I knew that I didn't have the mental capacity to go up and down any hill "6 x" last night.

Instead I opted to run a hill twice. It's a hill near my home. Quick and easy to get to; long and hard to run. In the past I've  referred to it as 'Honey Badger Hill'? That's because you need to just not give a s*it that it is really f*cking hard and just do it anyway.

Granted it was a run/walk...with walking a good bit less than half of the first trip up and a good bit less than a third of the second trip up. But I did mostly run it. Approximately 4 miles with a 700+ ft. climb over a mile each time up. (See images below). Even with some walking, I'm calling this workout "badass."

Two humps for me, please :)

because I don't know how to take a stretch of uphill on my Garmin read-out and make a mirror image, I must give this image credit to Patrick Mahoney.

one mile up, one mile down, one mile up, one mile down