end of week 1

So either Pandora failed me or my will failed me. Either way, I did not go to they gym yesterday. I did sort of help my parents move boxes (I barely helped) a I did lift one side of my king-sized bed (strong as bull!) so that my dad could get a mandolin he'd been storing under there along with a few guitars (the guitars were easy to get, but the mandolin found it way to the very center of the bed so normal human arms could not reach it). But honestly, I did no exercise yesterday.

Since I had to go to the gym today so I could get a run in, I was left with the difficult choice of doing the run I was supposed to do yesterday (jog 0.25 mi, walk 0.1 mi, jog 0.5 mi, walk 0.25mi) or to do the routine I was supposed to do today. Well, I decided to pretend that yesterday totally happened like it was supposed to and did today's scheduled routine.

Here's what it was:
Jog 0.5 mi at 6.0 mph
Walk 0.25 mi at 4.0 mph
Repeat

Since the previous sequences had been jog/walk/jog/walk repeated 4 times and this was only jog/walk, I wanted to repeat it 8 times. However, I didn't. I did it 7 full times and by on my 7th jog, I got a really bad cramp in my side. When I went to jog for the 8th time, it was so painful that I jogged maybe 1/5 of a mile and then had to walk. How do people get rid of these cramps when they're jogging? I tried putting pressure on it with my hand and massaging it, I tried lifting my arm on that side into the air, I tried twisting my body both more and less with each step, but nothing worked. So, I ended up doing 5.45 miles in 1 hour and 6 minutes at an incline of 1.0.

I think maybe I pushed myself too hard considering I hadn't run for the past two days. Maybe I should have done the shorter jogs sequence but repeated it an extra time to increase my overall distance. I'm not sure, all I know was that my side was killing me. Besides today's side cramp, my shoulders have also been hurting me when I run. I'm going to look into getting a massage. My back is always extremely knotted and maybe getting some of those out will help.  It'll at least make me feel better even if it doesn't help me run better.

I've been saying I was going to get a massage for the past year now and I have yet to get one.

New year, new massage?
-J