Hello, Quads.

By hello, I mean holy hell quads. After yesterday's run, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I stretched after the run, massaged my legs (with the body stick- again if you don't have one, get one here!), and even walked around rather than sleeping all day. When I woke up this morning, it was an entirely different story. My quads hurt to touch! I'm supposed to cross-train after my long runs, and today I've decided laundry qualifies. To give myself some credit, I'm in the upper part of a duplex and laundry is in the basement which equals 2 flights of stairs. It counts, right?!

Phil laughed at me a little today because they hurt so bad. He's like "do you understand why I'm not up for much after one of those now?" SO TRUE- I used to bug him all the time about being a homebody after his runs. I remember one time I wanted to go to the Art Museum, and he just couldn't do it. I get it now!! I would never be able to enjoy walking around a museum right now. I'm perfectly content watching Housewives, thank you very much.

I mentioned lactic acid build up yesterday. I'll be honest- I don't really get the science of it. I'm not a science girl by any means, and when it starts to get into how the body functions I'm lost. I try really hard, but just have a hard time grasping it. Phil is made for understanding these things and has tried to explain it like 50 times (not exaggerating) and finally just sent me an article on it. Naturally I've deleted it. So, I had him explain one more time this morning, and here's what I got-- Your body uses oxygen to create energy. When you've been working your body hard, for a long period of time it essentially runs out of oxygen to convert. It uses some other system to create energy to keep your body going and lactic acid is what's produced as a side affect. It's a bi-product that causes your muscles to feel sore. Here's the definition from Runners World.

The point of knowing what this is, is to understand how to be a better runner. If you can push your lactic acid threshold from 15 miles to 20 miles, then your performance will be that much better. This is what I'm so curious about knowing what's going on when I'm yelping in pain the day after a run. Education never hurt anyone, right?

Time for that last load of laundry...wish my quads good luck.