Stiff.

You know that feeling you get in your legs 2-3 days after you've run a marathon?

The one where your quad muscles feel like they've been replaced with rough blistering wood, your ass is so sore and tight, you're stiffer than a dead cat in formaldehyde, and the stairs to your apartment may as well be Mount Everest...

...yeah. That feeling.

It's quite unpleasant.

And it's not a feeling I get all too often. Usually only after a race or some crazy sick speedwork prescribed by the Chief of Pain. (or so I thought.)

Somebody apparently failed to send me the memo that this feeling also becomes blatantly evident when you begin strength training.

(...and this feeling is precisely why I've never done strength training with a modicum of serious fervor before.

it hurts...

...a lot!)

Case in point...when using the ladies room at work, I like to be able to sit and stand up without any outside assistance. Today, my quads were so sore that I nearly ripped the "old lady safety bar" right out of the wall while trying to stand up. That paired with the obvious audiable strenuous effort from the acts of sitting and standing, had anyone else been in there with me they may have thought I was dropping a bomb on Hiroshima. Muscle and sinew seriously screamed at me. It wasn't pretty.

But I've really been delaying strength training for far too long.

Too long as in my entire lifetime.

I figure...why not start now? At least on a half-way serious level. Afterall, it's 2010...I'll be 30 in a little over 20 months (gulp). And I'm not going to be doing any super serious racing this year. Yes, I've got a 70.3 on the docket, but 2010 is all about having fun, zero performance pressure on myself (i say that now), and fixing those little jiggly bits on my body that disgust me so.

So what history tells us, is that me in the weight room is pretty similar to how I am in the kitchen...

...aimlessly wandering around, wondering what different tools and machines do, heeding extreme caution as to avoid cutting off any fingers. If you didn't know. I can't cook. So I usually don't. (baking on the other hand...well let's just say that's how I got all my jiggly bits. I'm an awesome baker. and griller. and grilled cheese sammich-maker. but really? that's about all I can do. just ask Mike. He's the only reason I tend to get in three meals a day.)

Back to my point. I've never really done much strength training. It never fails to intimidate the pants off of me, even on the most basic of levels. Sure it was on my calendar last year as part of the big giant "get barb ready for Ironman" ...buuuuuuuuuuut I sometimes let it fall to the wayside. And by sometimes I mean all but 3 or 4 sessions of the 30-something weeks I trained. And those 3-4 sessions I did do...well, we're not going to talk about how laughable those were.

I know this isn't a task I can handle on my own as I simply don't have the knowledge base and proper form needed to not injure myself. And since Jillian Michaels isn't readily available to assist me, I turned to the next best thing. Strong friendboy.

An evening of basic lifts (CURSE YOU SQUATS AND LUNGES!! I bite my thumb at you!!) to get me started and two days later I find myself walking about as well as a geriatric woman after a hopscotch marathon with her grandkids. How could doing so little with such light weights hurt so much!?

It all proved one thing to me: I'm weak.
(for now.)

Sure, I'm mentally tough as nails and can will my body through the torture of 140.6 miles. But in terms of strength, it's quite amusing.

I've had to remind myself that strength training, like anything else, comes with a learning curve. I'm not naturally good at it. And to get to where you want to be requires a lot of work. If I want to get stronger, I have to learn not to be afraid of the weight room. Here's an excerpt from an article I recently read that struck a chord with me...

This has many variants, like “I can’t lift weights, I’m too weak” or “I can’t do yoga, I’m not flexible enough.” It all boils down to avoiding an activity because you lack the very trait that the activity is supposed to develop. You would never hear someone say, “I can’t go to school, because I can’t read and do math.” If you want to get better at something, do the thing that is designed to make you better at it. I understand that confronting your weaknesses and flaws is humbling and tough both physically and emotionally, but we have all of us overcome adversity in our lives. We have all grown as people and developed new skills where there were none before.

Clearly, I'm volunteering myself for a lot of stiff, sore muscles in the months to come. Hopefully it comes with the added benefit of diminishing jiggly bits and a toner, stronger bod. I'm looking to make strength training a weekly habit (once a week starting out and assuming I can handle it, twice by the time spring rolls around)...and will be taking some before and after photos (of which I'm not convinced I have the cahoonas to post on here...at least not yet).

I know the soreness isn't going to last forever, and the benefits far outweigh the temporary discomfort. And who knows...maybe one day later this summer I'll find myself in a place where I'm confident enough to ditch the shirt and go for a long run in a sports bra and shorts while soaking up the sun...

...a girl can dream, can't she?

...but until then, I'll do my best not to rip the safety bar off the wall in the bathroom stall.