Reading and Motivation.... and feeling like a wimp because someone else isn't...

So, as I had posted yesterday, my son had generously shared his fever/sore throat/achy muscles/etc..  So I had passed on my Tuesday workout, and stayed home on weds.  As I was curled up on the couch, in my comfy clothes and hot tea  I began to read through my blog-list that I enjoy reading.  Now, rather than reading some of them everyday, I wait and catch up on several days at once.  One of the people I do this with - is the "Running Thriver."  Brief background is that she went through some rough spots in life (understatement here), and has used fitness/working out/etc to really turn her life around.  In the time I have been reading her blog, she has begun doing a "boot camp" workout at a gym, and for the last month, has been doing Insanity.  Some days she does both.  In other words, she is a seriously intense person - and it shows.  Well, I was reading her blog, and there was a link to an earlier post at the bottom.  It had a funny title - "Why Boot camp and Decongestants Don't Mix...."- so I clicked on it.  

"Damn" I thought after reading it.  This woman is out there doing an Insanity workout in

No couch.. but you get the idea.

"Well... Maybe I can sweat this thing out then.." I thought. 

So, I headed back into my custom gym (sounds much better than "kid's playroom" doesn't it?), with that thought in mind.  I decided to do a bit of a longer run as a warm up - and did 2.25 miles in 20 minutes.  I started at 6 mph, then every 5 minutes went up .5 mph.  I wasn't feeling oto badly after that, so I followed it up with a nice Back and Bicep workout on my imitation-total-gym (I need a better name for it..)  I even remembered to do situps at the end!!!  Then I hopped back on the treadmill, 5 minutes at 6mph, 5 minutes at 6.5 mph, 10 minutes at 7 mph (another 2.25 miles), then a half a mile of walking.

The nice thing, is my muscles that were sore from Monday's chest & tri work out - weren't near as sore as they were.  AFter my cooling down, stretching and showering - I continued reading blogs.  I went over to read today's entry from "notajogger" - a runner (not a jogger) over in England who's post was titled "Do Recovery Runs Really Work?   While the entire blog-posting is interesting (especially since I had wondered the exact same thing), the part that stood out to me was a link on "Muscle Fever."  As I had never heard of this before - I decided to follow the link and read about it. It turns out that "Muscle Fever" is also known as "Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness."   Or as I learned when I first started lifting weights back in 1998 - Oh my god are my muscles going to hurt alot more the next day (and especially the one after that) then it does today...   What I found really interesting in the wiki was how they questioned the value of exercising to relieve "Muscle Fever" for resistance training.   When I was just starting lifting, I was told to workout the next day also - or it would get worse.. I always found that to be true.  I found it to be true again yesterday, as lifting did indeed help with my "muscle fever."