MAN, my legs are sore…But in a good way.

Between elliptical training and ballet, my quads are killing me. My severe shin splints have been kept relatively under control with compression socks/compression sleeves, stretching and a little bit of ice. I tried to avoid any activity in class last night that I’ve known has aggravated my shins (ie jumping and moving quickly in and out of a releve position).

For the most part, I attempted to hang out at the middle of barre/back of the studio so that no one would have to watch/follow my clumsy self. That was, until my ballet instructor had me move to the front of the studio in the middle of our center work and to explained to everyone who probably didn’t recognize me (since I haven’t made it to a class in about two months) that I was just back from an injury.

I was relatively pain-free–except when I accidentally attempted a pas de chat when I forgot that I was supposed be taking it easy because I was excited to be in the front of studio. For the most part, muscle memory kicked in and I remembered the moves, but I did have some moments where I thought to myself “Uhhh what exactly are you trying to do there, Kristen?” as I completely messed up a combination.

Overall, I’m really happy with the way the class went.

The rest of my week was:

Monday: Job interview, so other than the mile walk to and from the train station in the cold, I didn’t exercise and came home and crashed after being up at 6:30 am.

Tuesday: My boyfriend and I decided to try the manual treadmills in our school’s fairly new gym but neither of us really cared for them (note: I’m terrified of treadmills. Someone please help me get over this fear). The ellipticals here were kind of pointless because the resistance option was broke on all of them–so we left with me only roughly getting a ten minute workout in.

Wednesday: Finally getting into the swing of things, I did 30 minutes worth of interval work on the elliptical using a Couch to 5k running plan.

Thursday: Ballet class and another easier 30 minutes on the elliptical as to try to not wear myself out.

Friday: An easy 28 minutes  on the elliptical following my schedule. I’ll be doing some foam rolling and stretching tonight to help out my legs a bit.

This weekend the plan is:

Saturday: Ballet class in the am if I feel up to it followed by taking a really easy 30 minute work out on the elliptical.

Sunday: More elliptical training, hopefully a pilates class as well.

Part of what has helped kick me back into high gear with my workout plan (and back into blogging!) has been that I recently became a Sweat Pink Ambassador. They’re an awesome community of women who run fitness blogs.

Plus, they sent me a bunch of pink shoelaces some of which I’ll be giving away next week!

Tell me, how do you motivate yourself to get to dance class or workout?