Last night I did my 16th Hot Yoga class in 15 days (I did a double yesterday so I can miss class on February 5 for snowboarding!)

Below is a snapshot from my Dailymile Account and shows the number of workouts I did last week. 4 runs + 7 yoga classes. I’m getting a lot of “Omg, how are you doing that?” “I couldn’t do it. Where do you get the motivation.”

Truth?

The truth is it’s really hard and I’m getting burnt out.

When my alarm goes off at 5:15 for the third morning in a row after I did yoga until 9:00 PM the night before it’s exhausting and I definitely do not always want to get out of bed – but I do it anyways.

The key for me is something I touched on before Christmas: There is an end in sight to this so I am powering through. This is not a workout amount that I could maintain for much longer than 30ish days. I’ve had to let other hobbies and passions – like reading and cooking – fall by the wayside during this challenge, which is fine for the short term, but it’s just another reason I couldn’t sustain this effort long-term!

But I’ve committed to the 30-day challenge and I’m going to see it through. I’ve also committed to a 21-km Trail Race at the end of March and a bi-weekly running group so I’m going to see both of those things through too (meaning I can’t stop running for the remainder of the challenge either).

I am not the type of person to sign up for something and then quit. So I will power through.

My solution for the next 15 days is going to be cutting back a bit on running, 2-3 days a week instead of 3-4, and keeping my weekends relatively open. Last weekend was fabulous but I did a little too much which didn’t leave me feeling refreshed and rejuvenated for this busy week I have ahead!

Here’s to pushing through the last 15 days of the challenge!

What do you do when you start to burn out? Can you push through for a certain period of time or do you reassess your schedule as soon as the burnout starts?

Remember when I was marathon training and it was all I talked about for 4 months? Well, welcome to my latest obsession: Yoga.

With my Hot Yoga Challenge I am spending upwards of 11 hours per week doing yoga plus the 4-5 hours a week I work at the studio. Needless to say, I have yoga on the brain and not much else when it comes to blog topics. So, now that I’ve been doing so much yoga I thought I would blog about some of my favourite (and least favourite!) poses.

Poses I Love

Pigeon!

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Oh how my tight hips love this pose! I’ve progressed from putting my elbows on the floor (above photo) to being able to get my forehead down onto the floor. I love how I can feel my hips loosening up as we hold the pose. We usually hold this pose for 1-3 minutes and I love it. It’s nice to have the time to just relax into a pose.

Downward Dog!

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My shoulders have gotten a lot stronger over the last few weeks and I’m finally at the point where this pose is considered a “relaxation” pose for me! I love hanging out in downward dog after a tough flow series to get my heart rate back down again.

Warrior I

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Such a proud pose! I love this pose because it’s a challenge to hold, but not so challenging that I can’t relax into the posture. One of my instructors describes this pose as being “strong yet supple” and that’s exactly how I feel when I’m in this pose.

I also love the warrior series in general when you transition from Warrior I to Warrior II to Triangle. That series has strengthened my quads SO MUCH! My running partner even commented last week on how good I am getting at running hills and that’s thanks to building up strength in my quads from yoga.

Poses That Are Growing On Me

Sleeping Hero

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I used to hate this pose because I couldn’t do it. Not even close! I have very tight knees and ankles from running and this pose was not their friend. But over the last few months that I’ve been keeping a regular yoga practice my knees and ankles have loosened up and I’ve discovered I can now lie all the way back down onto my shoulders in this pose (although not quite as gracefully as in the above photo) I love the stretch my quads get from this pose.

Runners Lunge with Spinal Twist

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Another pose that I used to hate because I couldn’t do it. But over the last few weeks my balance and leg strength have improved immensely. Now not only can I reach the full expression of this pose (above) I can sit in it for a few moments and enjoy myself. I even start to relax into it. This pose makes me feel incredibly strong because it’s a challenging one to hold.

Poses I Still Kind of Hate

Rabbit

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Ugh. I always dread this pose. I just do not enjoy it. I don’t like the way my body is all crunched up and the fact that I can barely get into it (my hips are definitely a lot closer to my heels than this example!). I know that I’m getting benefits from it, but I still don’t enjoy doing it. At all.

Toe Stand

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I just don’t think I have the knees for this pose. I can usually kind of get into it and then I last for all of 3 seconds because my knees and ankles start to hurt. I also haven’t seen ANY improvement in this pose over the last few months so I’m thinking it might be an unachievable one for me? I guess I don’t like it because I suck at it

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What are your favourite yoga poses? Least favourite? Any poses that grew on you through your yoga practice?

Hello there! Whoa, almost three days without a post? How unlike me.

The last weekend was such a whirlwind of busy, exciting, fun activity that blogging hardly crossed my mind and then all of a sudden Monday afternoon was here and my fingers were itching to write!

I don’t really have my mind together for a coherent post right now so here’s a hodge-podge of what’s been going on:

Snowboarding

Eric bought a used set of snowboarding gear at a consignment sports store on Saturday afternoon so we headed up the mountain for another half-day of snowboarding yesterday. Due to rain on Saturday night the conditions had changed a lot from the weekend before. The snow was sticky, hard and icy.

We had a great time, though and we’re already looking forward to our next time up. We’ve decided that we’ll definitely be purchasing seasons passes next year!

Yoga

Holy man you guys, yoga has literally taken over my life. I spent 11.5 hours in the hot room last week! I did 7 hot yoga classes in 6 days with 5 of them being 90-minute classes and 2 being 75-minute ones.

I missed Sunday for snowboarding (but had done a double-class the Monday before) so I’m on track to finish my 30 classes in 30 days. It’s just very, very time consuming. Even more than marathon training. But I love every second of it!

Running

Running has big-time taken a back seat to yoga. I only ran once last week (!!) so only ended up doing 6 miles for the whole week. However, I am starting a “Run Faster Clinic” this Wednesday night at the local running store in hopes of increasing my speed so I can run a sub 2-hour half-marathon.

I’ll be running with the group on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings so hopefully that will inspire me to get out there more often. Running is still my first love, yoga has just seduced me a little bit more.

House Hunting

I haven’t mentioned it after “the incident” but Eric and I are still looking for a townhouse to buy. New mortgage rules were just announced in Canada today which may affect our search a bit but we are trying to not be deterred. There simply isn’t much on the market right now but we have a fantastic new realtor working for us and hopefully more things will be coming up in the next few months. We will buy a townhouse in 2011!

Black Swan

I went and saw Black Swan last night and it was a very strange movie. I’m not really sure what to make of it. I kept thinking “this is one of those movies that’s going to come together at the end” but it didn’t. If you’ve seen it I highly recommend reading Caitlin’s Analysis on it, it really helped me understand the movie more!

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Well, that’s it, that’s all for now. I will be back to semi-regularly blogging the rest of this week! I think I may be a bit more absent than normal during my yoga challenge, so bear with me!

What’s going on in your lives?