"I know it hurts; it's supposed to!"

"Breath! Breath more!"

My two favorite quotes from Tony Horton's P90X videos. They run through my head all the time, especially when my muscles are screaming about lactic acid.

As previously mentioned, I'm kicking myself into high gear to prepare for my race in < 9 weeks. So far, I've done something active every single day in March. I tried this once before and discovered that I could not do leg intensive workouts 3 days in a row and expect to improve my pace. (In fact, I think overwork was a contributing factor in how sick I ended up.) This time, I'm alternating focus and intensity. My treadmill class is all lower body most of the time, so I thought I was safe doing upper body Tuesday. Alex (our instructor) threw a curve ball at us last night and had us doing weights in intervals with the treadmill stuff, including one particularly brutal lift that had my deltoids (shoulders) screaming for mercy. I can't lift my arms all the way today. Ouch! So I don't know what I want to do tonight. Core?

My body feels pretty great though, all considered. I had a good discussion with Alex this week about goals, too, and it's making me feel better about the slooooow weight loss. My goals primarily center around things I want to DO, and if I get in good race-you-to-the-top condition, I know the shape of my body will improve, too. I'm still using the number on the scale as a barometer to measure progress, though, and it sucks to feel myself getting fitter, stronger, and still not have that number show what I feel happening. I know it's a trap: I know muscle is denser than fat, but I still weigh-in and feel my heart sink a little bit when the number stays stubborn.

With that in mind, I'm thinking about giving up the scale for this month. It's tough, because I feel SO GOOD when I do have a loss to hold in my mind and smile about. I tell myself it's a good time to reevaluate my week. Did I really eat as well as I thought I did? What could I have done better? But really, I weigh myself twice a day now, because I feel like I need to KNOW how I'm doing. I don't want to be surprised on Monday morning. I'm addicted. I'm going to have Bobby hide it.

I have stopped double checking my scale even though it gives an artificially low number the first time. It does it every time, so it is still an accurate measure of loss, if not actual weight. It tickles at my mind a little bit that it's wrong, but not it's not nearly as frustrating as weighing myself 6 or 7 times in a row to try to get an accurate read.