Thankfully, I got to cross-train today. I did the stationary bike for an hour and finished the book "The Great Influenza". Then I did some weight training, but only had time for a few sets. I basically did chest press lying on the ball (exercise my coach sent, but I've seen it before too) and rowing machine (weights, not the aerobic one), and alternated those with the glute machine and some glute exercises on the ball. I wanted to figure out which muscles are hurting and which exercises target those muscles so that I can do some more strengthening exercises. It didn't take long to figure out a couple exercises that would do the trick. On the glute machine, pushing down and then back with my left leg was definitely activating the sore muscles. I did 3 sets, and seriously, my muscles felt much better after working them. Then I did one on the exercise ball that Jim told me about a while ago - put chest on ball, knees on floor, and kick back and then around to the side. It works glutes and abductors, and the glute part was definitely hitting the sore spots. Now, at lunch time, my rear end feels vastly better than yesterday.
I'm hoping that I'll be up for tomorrow's very hard workout: 10K fartlek. It's the first 10K fartlek I've done, so I confess I'm nervous about going the distance, especially with my glutes acting up. If the pain gets too bad, I'll stop though.
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Cross-cultural education was also on the agenda yesterday. My coach is from Australia, where horse racing is very, very popular. I happen to really enjoy horse racing, though it's not like I get to watch it often, and I'm certainly no expert on the sport. Anyway, the Melbourne Cup was yesterday, and it's the biggest race of the year - kind of like the Kentucky Derby plus the Superbowl all in one. So, my coach set up his Skype so I could watch on his TV (albeit VERY fuzzy, though the sound was OK) and follow along. I had picked Americain to win the race, partly because he was Kentucky bred, partly because he'd be having some good races, and partly because of his name since I'm an American. I couldn't see very well, but heard the announcer shouting my horse's name at the end and though maybe I'd won - sure enough, I did! Lucky break for me, and a lot of fun. Speaking of sports, Loren's favorite baseball team, the Giants (he's been a fan forever), won the World Series last night, ending a 50+ year drought for them. It was awesome. Really a great sports night!
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Time zone wackiness has been on my mind as well. Last night at 11 pm when I am definitely not at my best mentally, my coach was telling me that after this weekend we'd be 18 hours different instead of 17. Somehow I had it in my mind that our going to standard time would make us 16 hours different again...but in my sleep-deprived idiocy I forgot that because it is SPRING there and FALL here that we are going back but they are going forward. Somehow I thought they had gone back an hour and that we'd be back to the same time difference we were at during our summer. But no, it's weirder than that...during our summer (their winter) we are 16 hours apart, but in our winter (their summer) we are 18 hours apart. Way too much for my mind to grasp at 11 pm, though this morning it all made perfect sense. Good thing I work in the mornings and early afternoons - my brain is definitely not terribly functional after dinner!
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