“You’ve reached Crystal. I can’t come to the phone right now because I’m knee-deep in Puffs Plus-Lotion and self pity.”
The plague of winter colds finally caught us over here. We hauled ass and gave it a good run for its money, but we’ve been hit. On the bright side we have escaped the rebellious Influenza A (knock on wood), so it could always be worse. I haven’t felt this dog-tired and sick since I was a few weeks post-partum with Luke and got hit with some crazy strain AND pink-eye in the same week. *shudder* Some memories are best left alone.
So I probably don’t have to tell you that there hasn’t been any wine this week. That would require my palate to stop telling my brain that everything tastes like chicken stock. There haven’t been any workouts. Usually if I’m sick I can at least muster the energy to do yoga or Pilates. But today when I attempted some restorative yoga and went down into forward fold, what escaped from my respiratory system sounded exactly like two pigs suffocating one another. Towel thrown.
There are always whippersnappers but for the most part they’ve been perfectly happy snuggling with me on the couch watching Disney movies and Sesame Street. Normally I would secretly wish I were catching up on Orange is the New Black instead, but I’ve been perfectly happy zoning out to Elmo the Musical. Now do you believe how sick I am? Okay, okay. Self pity red light!
What I am fortunate to have time to do today is work on a blog post. Since it’s the beginning of the new year and a big part of this blog is dedicated to fitness, it would be silly of me not to jump on the Resolution Bandwagon. But rather than give you a new smoothie recipe that I can’t taste right now I thought I’d give you the running workout I’m going to do next week when I get back in the saddle. This is the same one I do every time I get back into running after taking a hiatus and I love it because it’s super adjustable depending on your fitness level.
You can slow the walking intervals down if you have a shorter stride length. Sometimes I’ll push the running intervals faster or raise the incline if I’m feeling really good. I know how daunting running on the treadmill can be but in the winter we are often left with no choice, at least where I live. And you must do cardio to shed fat, so it’s a necessary evil.

Once this starts to feel easy, you’ll need to push everything harder. I’ll post an intermediate runner’s workout down the road but in the spirit of January, this is a great start!
I’m looking forward to getting back into running mode next week. In the meantime, the only running I’m doing is from the tea kettle to the couch.