The Ides of May

The forecast is for around 60 and clouds for TRY time.

The results of last weeks informal question about compression led me to this conclusion: we pay a lot to wear compression clothing, so of course we are going to convince ourselves that it works. And as silly of creatures as humans are - that belief itself is enough to be worth the money. 

For this week, I have a mis-mash of links.

First, for people newer to TRY that may wonder about the reasons behind doing interval running, here is yet another article explaining the why's, how's and when's of running intervals. It gets very basic in some of its explanation - so a great read for beginners. For those of you who skip all of my links know that it says to wait until you have a base, warm up first, and my favorite thing to repeat about repeats is that you should run your hard runs harder and your easier runs easier. (Do NOT run every run at the same pace/exertion, Susan! This will be a great test to see if she still reads the blog posts. #suebrokethetry)

I got to that link by starting to read about interval workouts - that is - interval training during non-running workouts. A study (SCIENCE!) came out about a "one minute workout" that showed that doing an interval based bike workout produced very similar results to a much longer bike workout. The key takeaway to me is that when pressed for time, work out smarter, instead of working out longer, and definitely instead of not working out at all. Here is the master article about interval workouts - with a few good links inside - but that points out that interval workouts should not be your only workout. (Keep in mind that I refuse to do ANY workout, but if I did workout, I would definitely do some interval workouts. Maybe?)

If you care only about running or getting in better physical shape, stop here. For those of you who care about random things, well, by all means - continue:

The completely overdone video version of what happens to you body when you don't have sex. Sure, I could list the bullet points for you here and save putting in the link, or you could read most/all of them in the short article...but that would not get them their precious video view...and what would be the fun in that? Let's just say that if you cuddled a Mickey Mouse plush doll as you fell asleep last night instead of cuddling someone else...well, you are missing out on some important health benefits. (Note: I am not signaling out any particular single people with the above example, I just made up an example behavior that a single person might or might not choose to do.)

Lastly, for some color directly in the blog, this humorous video on what a meat eater behaving like a vegetarian would look like. Obviously, way over the top, and completely based on a stereotypical vegetarian...and not like anyone I've ever met. But people like this must exist somewhere, because stereotypes do not get made out of thin air:

(If you can get through the "but none of the cucumber" line without a grin on your face, then you are a better woman than me!)