Ugly Toes

My original idea for a title was "Baby, it's cold outside!" after the song. After a fairly mild winter, it has been absolutely frigid the last few days. Friday, it never got above 0 and the windchills were in the -30s. Yesterday it creeped just above 0 in the afternoon, with windchills in the -10s to -20s.

My poor puppy was miserable Friday morning. She normally loves to go outside in the snow; she loves to dive into it and run around and just generally be crazy. But Friday morning, she was having issues with squatting in the snow, and then she started limping around on only 3 paws. She repeated the limping (alternating which paw she would lift up) for the Engineer, so he suggested we get her some boots.

Now, let me make one thing clear: I DO NOT dress up my dog. She doesn't own any "outfits" and I refuse to let her have bows at the groomers. The only thing she wears is her (orange) collar and (blue) tags (hmmm ... what are her owners' school colors?). Until I found the orange collar, she had a blue collar and leash, so people always assumed we had a boy puppy. (And as a sidenote, I hate gender color stereotyping, so my hypothetical future kids will probably wear a lot of green and yellow until they are old enough to pick out their own clothes). So anyway, I went off to PetCo after work to locate some boots for my poor puppy. She wasn't too happy about the boots, but she was able to tolerate the cold snow better.

That was kind of a long lead up just to have an excuse to post some puppy pictures.

I think she's actually scowling at me!

Outside with boots. The ground was bare two days prior.

Two days prior: Molly with her most favorite toy. She's staring at me, hoping to will me to put away the camera and get back to playing.

So onto my post title. Yesterday, I had a good workout. I refused to go outside because of the cold, so I ran on the 'mill. Aside from accidentally stopping my watch (which meant having to run at the same speed for awhile so I could figure out my final time), it was a pretty uneventful 'mill run. I actually made a halfway decent playlist prior to running, and managed to only skip a few songs. I did drop the speed towards the end because I felt a little tired (and my left ankle had done something weird at 2.5 miles) but overall I felt okay. I decided to call it a day at 6.5 miles instead of pushing to 7 because I didn't need the extra distance. I ran for just over an hour - my longest run in a very long time.

Today, however, wasn't as good. I just didn't want to do anything. I did the elliptical for a total of 45 minutes; I had HRM malfunction issues again. I stopped and went to soak the strap (apparently the electrode gel isn't working for me anymore), which helped some. I still got some erratic readings, but I don't know if that was the HRM or if I was just having trouble getting my heart rate up and staying up. I started to weight lift after that. Bleh. I ended up skipping my last 4 exercise because I just didn't want to do them. Two of the exercises were for shoulders, and I had already had my left shoulder repeatedly pop during tricep extensions. I had intended to walk after lifting, but I skipped that, too. I don't feel too bad about cutting my workout short, though. I figure if I really don't want to XT, there isn't much point in forcing it. Extra rest isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Saturday:
1 | 9:19
2 | 9:19 | 18:38
3 | 9:19 | 27:57
4 | 9:19 | 37:16
5 | 9:27 | 46:43
6 | 9:27 | 56:10
---------------------------
treadmill @ 1% | 6.5 miles | 1:00:53 | 9:22/mi.
treadmill @ 1 % | walk CD | 0.50 miles | 7:32

Sunday:
elliptical | 5:00 | 0.31 miles (HRM malfunction)
elliptical | 35:00 HR Cardio/5:00 CD | 29:06 in zone | 2.71 miles
lower + upper body weights | 28:00