Milestone of Rest

Still couch surfing

In the past week, besides occasionally going to class or work, here is the amount of physical activity I've done:

35 minutes of slow elliptical.

I feel completely fine with that.

Which represents a real milestone for me as an athlete and as a person.

For those of you who don't know, and I'm guessing that's the majority of you, I've had a rocky relationship with working out stemming from a bout of anorexia coupled with exercise addiction back in college. For most of my sophomore and all of my junior year, I was a complete wreck. During the course of a normal day, I would have panic attacks if I didn't complete the following list every day:

Run one mile
Elliptical for 90 minutes
Stationary bike for 30-60 minutes
Dance (part of my major) about 3 hours a day

In addition to that list, I had rehearsals, walked to classes (Penn State is a big campus), and held down a part time job.

Not surprisingly, I developed a stress fracture in my hip that sidelined me to disastrous eating habit results. Each day that passed I agonized over the "weight" that I was going to gain, about the exercise I wasn't doing, about how it was going to wreck absolutely everything and I would never be able to catch up.

When the stress fracture healed, I jumped right back into my routine. It wasn't until I fixed elements completely outside of weight/exercise that things began to get better.

I've never been as bad as I was back then. But exercise, for a long long time, held a place of "must do to stay thin" rather than "want to do because I enjoy it." As such, there was a dangling ax of extra poundage should I not perform my routine of 45 minutes of cardio and either upper body or lower body for weights. 6 days a week, the gym became somewhat of a prison rather than an escape.

Jump to now. I've sat around on my butt ALL WEEK, doing NOTHING, NOT changing my eating habits except for I'm not carb loading like I was last week in preparation for my disastrous Uwharrie 20 miles. I've been on the scale and yes, it has gone up. But I honestly (no, honestly for those of you who know me) DO NOT CARE. Compared to a lifetime of running, what does one measly week mean? Once I'm up and running again, I know those few pounds will go away. And even if they don't, I'm going to run a fricking marathon. Please.

The elliptical yesterday was a good test run. 35 minutes, and I came off none the worse for wear and feeling no pain today. Tomorrow I'll get back into my MTW FSAt routine. Today is one more day off to prep for that.

So this week, there was no new long run mileage to boast of, no faster split or amazing hill work. There was me. And my couch. And my Hulu. Which all adds up to a milestone.