Too Much?

As everyone is probably well aware and experienced with, around the age 27-28 you get invited to weddings and a lot of them. By age of 30, your closet is full of "beautiful" bridesmaids dresses to show how much your friends love you and love to torture you. This year is no different as some of my closest friends get hitched in the fall which includes being in the bridal party. Thank you all for not choosing summer weddings as it puts a cramp on tri season!

How do these wedding affect running season? Well, in short they don't until you look at my workout schedule. No one wants to be the fat kid in the picture and no one wants to order a dress in an ungodly size. On our first outing to buy dresses, the old lady measured me for my dress and wrote down some insane size. I got upset and I meant business. I decided I needed to do something about it to get the size down. It turns out, she measured wrong and I am much closer to my real size than she told me which makes me ok. In my head though, I still keep seeing that original number on paper and it freaks me out. With that freakout, I decided to up my game and pick up body pump and other classes during the week to compliment my running. I may have been a bit too aggressive!

Right now, Monday, Wednesday and Friday I find myself sweating away at a muscle conditioning class at work which allows me to add on some weights to my routine. Don't think otherwise, this class is killer. The teachers are awesome and I get my butt kicked while feeling like it is nothing as I am lifting 10 pound weights. Do 100 reps of these and the 10 pounders add up! Wednesday and Friday I am also taking a cycling class in which we practice hill repeats to gain strength when out on the road. Hills are a challenge on the road, but 10x harder in a class where the computrainer can mimic a 9% incline. Five additional classes a week don't sound too bad, but these are hard classes, like really hard. I find myself perpetually tired and sore, but at the same time looking forward to the next class.

So, I am not sure if I am doing too much, but I am having a blast doing it all. I will probably go until the week before the marathon and then take that week off of body pump. Once the marathon is over, I will be back full swing but adding in running with a running group on Saturdays. With the goal of Marine Corps in October weeks after all these weddings, I need to keep pounding it hard.