Crosstraining weirdness

Everyone is always talking about cross-training, and how important it is. And I'm sure they're right. And hey, I'm even going to do some! But let me just tell you, dear IR's, cross-training is weird.

For one thing, it makes you feel like a wimp. Which is not, generally speaking, a great goal of mine. I mean I do feel like a wimp all the time, but it happens often enough that I don't feel a need to supplement it with my training schedules. But after gasping my lungs out following a single lap in the pool, my wimp-o-meter was clicking along quite merrily, I assure you. And it's a weird kind of wimpiness, that goes kind of like this: "I can run 26.2 miles, but I can't swim 100 yards?? Really??? Oh @#!!." Yup, that's the wimpiness of cross training. Incidentally, I've discovered that for me swimming has a simple definition: Not drowning in a particular direction. I'm hoping to not drown in a given direction more quickly, but that will take extensive training.

Another weird thing is this: you get these bizarre paradoxical post work out reactions. Last night I did my 12 whole laps, then gave up because I could not make my arms move any more, then biked for 15 minutes, then stopped for similar reasons, and then ran a bit just to round it out. What was weird was that I had to stop, had to, both swimming and biking because my muscles were too tired. But then when I got out to run, I felt like I could keep going for miles. I only made myself stop because I was planning on running the next day (which, btw, I didn't - Lazy me). So when I was done my legs were stiff and shaky, my arms hurt terribly, muscles I didn't have were hurting, and I felt like I hadn't really worked out and wanted to do another 5 miles. And I felt like I had the wind and the energy to do it. You see what I mean? Bizarre. On the other hand I'm not actually complaining about this particular bizarreness, because it did help a bit with the wimpiness discussed above.

Never fear, dear readers, Ol' Shifter will keep you posted about every ache and pain, twist and turn, splash and gasp as the training progresses. We're all in for a rip-roaring good time over the next many moons.