Fitness cycle.

I have noticed as I've been working from a training schedule for pretty much the last 3 years of my life, that fitness - both physical and mental - is cyclical.  Typically (for me) this cycle goes about a week or two at a time.  During an "up" phase, I feel great, fit, on top of my game, killing every workout.  During a "down" phase, I feel fatigued, "off", like I'm going through the motions.  Like all things in life, I think it's important that we pass through these different stages so that we can fully appreciate when things are good.  The key is to just keep at it in a consistent manner, no matter how you feel.  I try to be "present" during all of my workouts, especially when I'm doing my strength training at the gym, but some days will still be blah.  I just do what I know I should do and that way I don't have any regrets a week later.  You know what I mean?

I think I am between phases right now.  I have been feeling a little off for almost two weeks now, so I know some good days are ahead of me.  Today is the first day of week 11 of my "Misty-fied" training schedule.  While I have been diligently tracking my training on a timeline - 11 weeks of current training schedule, 6 months of (purely) clean-eating, etc. - I am also aware that this is a lifelong thing and I plan to continue with all of my current, healthy habits indefinitely.  I am just keeping track right now for purposes of seeing my progress and staying motivated.

Since I haven't blogged since Wednesday of last week (maybe I should just start blogging once a week with a rundown of my week's workouts!), here's how the past few days have been:

Thursday: A typical Thursday for me - 1.5 hours spent in the weight room doing my 2nd weekly leg workout, then an awesome HIIT style workout with Misty's Muscle Fusion X class.

Friday: Weights included chest/shoulder/triceps for a total of 1.5 hours.  After that, an hour of spinning.

Saturday: When I woke up, the temperatures were in the 30's so I geared up and headed outside for a run at 5:45am.  Once out on the road, my feet were slipping all over the place on black ice so I went back inside to run on the treadmill.  Disappointing, but I still got in 8.2 miles in 90 minutes, then spent the rest of the day with my kids at their basketball games.

This morning I am headed to the gym for a nice, long leg workout followed by a spinning class.  I am hopeful it is going to be a fantastic week full of purposeful workouts. :)