I had grand plans to break it to you that I wasn't going to be running the 10K in Taber and how disappointed I was about it, but that I was going to console myself with a trip to Trinidad and Tobago for my friend's wedding at the end of July.
That's an awesome consoluation prize!
Except that's not how it played out.
While I was looking at possible flights and dreaming of beautiful beaches, work was reviewing the projects coming down the pipe and how far along we were on the current ones. I came into work yesterday all ready to put my tickets on hold... and instead I got notification that a couple of project completion dates had been moved up and July is now a no-holiday month for me.
*sigh*
Looking on the bright side, I can still run the 10K in Taber!
And I'll get to enjoy some Taber corn. I would stab someone in a bar fight for an ear of Taber corn. To be fair, though, I'd probably stab someone in a bar fight for tickets to Trinidad so...
I decided I needed to subliment the running with some weight training so I've joined a gym. I'm trying to go before work so I can avoid the after work craziness. It's not so bad if I take the time to sort myself out the night before and get myself to bed at a decent hour. Who knows, I might even start to like it!
Other than two days when I decided not to walk (once due to my back being sore again, once due to driving up island to visit family), I rocked last week's goal. Sadly, my back is still a bit of an issue. While I'm still noticing improvement, my injury is in an annoying location that I tweak anytime I sit down or bend over. Full recovery is going to take longer than I originally hoped.
Boo-urns.
It does, however, make writing this week's goals very simple: walk 20 minutes every day... again. I'm going to up the ante a wee bit and add two easy sessions of yoga. I'm hoping it will help with the back issues.
The downside is that I'm lacking in blogging mojo because you can only talk about not being able to do things for so long before you feel it's better to just shut up. Curse you, back pain! CURSE YOU!
I had a less than stellar Wednesday both health and general life-wise. By the time last night rolled around and I settled in to post, I was feeling sorry for myself and felt that everyone else should share my pity. I was going to post and I wanted to whine... a lot. Before starting to whine and vent online, I checked my feeder to find this post from Susan.
Susan is one of the first healthy living bloggers I found when I first started this journey. I learned a lot from her fitness posts, followed her adventures as she moved from New Brunswick to Toronto and back again, felt helpless as she talked about her shattered elbow, and secretly decided she was my hero when she did an entire dinner themed around beer.
I can not even imagine what must be running through her mind right now but other than sending positive thoughts there's not much I can do about it.
And just like that, all my complaints seemed so minuscule, hardly worthy of the time to type them, that I never posted. So I had a bad day, who doesn't from time to time? It's time to pick myself up, put on my big girl panties and deal with it.
Because that's what Susan would do for something as trifling as a head cold.
I was super pumped to head out this morning. Not only was it a bright, clear, mild morning, but thanks to the time change I was ready to head out ridiculously early (well, for me on a weekend, it was ridiculously early). I'd be able to get a run in and still be home in time to do everything I wanted today.
I was supposed to do 8 sets of run-walk. I finished the first run feeling good but as I walked my right hip started to ache. I got through my next run still feeling great but when I started to walk again the pain returned. As the running felt okay, I stretched a bit more and took off again but when I returned to walking I was limping.
It was sore as I made my way home but it ached less. Then I went to lunch with my mom and by the time we left, I could either limp when I moved my right leg forward or I could put it far to the right of my body causing me to toddle down the road like a little old lady. Now I'm home and stuck on the couch with ice on my hip. Oh, please, please let this be temporary!
I was going to go for my first run today since the doctor's okay. I wasn't planning anything big, just to head out the door and see how far I could make it. I wanted to see exactly how much of my endurance I had lost in the five weeks before I start doing a more structure running schedule this coming week. Mostly, I wanted to go for a run just to get out of the house while the weather is still as beautiful as it is today, before the rains return. I was so excited about getting out and running that I dreamt about it twice last night.
Then this morning, my cat got underfoot while I was getting out of bed. I landed on my right foot at a strange ankle and had to limp to the couch. It's nothing serious--it's already better than it was an hour ago--but it's sore. I've already had to take one extended break from running, I don't want to have to take another. I'll just go for a walk this morning instead and wait until Tuesday to start my running.
I'm finally back from the dead over the chest/head cold which has been keeping me pretty low key for the last week. It's been a tough two weeks--I was told to stop running, I lost my workout buddy to Vancouver, I was viciously attacked by my own respiratory system--and I have to admit that at one point, I felt like giving up on the getting healthy. Then a few friends were talking about next week's marathon which I will no longer be participating in. That really didn't help the crummy.
As I got over my cold, I also got over my 'oh woe is me' feelings and decided to focus on the positive:
Running is temporarily on hold while we sort out what's up with my knees. The doc is very positive that I will be back at it soon and that nothing long term has actually happened to my knees.
I'm still allowed to dance and that makes me the happiest when it comes to cardio. I will be plante-tacon-ing and djole-ing once a week for the foreseeable future.
Before the attack of the irritated bronchial tubes, I was doing well with the 'at home' workouts. I know what needs tweaking when I start them up again this week.
I have a new walking partner.
My eating has been very clean throughout my illness and I know I can continue that through the next couple weeks.
Beauty and the Beast comes out on DVD on Tuesday!
Okay, so that last one isn't health/fitness related but it's a positive, darn it!
At the start of September I began writing a contract with myself as a guide to keep myself on target with my workouts and eating. Somewhere along the way, it went from being a simple contract with a few guidelines to a fully annotated Encyclopdia AndreaClairicus. The original thought was in the right place and I want to go back to that. I have a rough draft of it done so I plan to do a quick rewrite of it and then it will be up on here for everyone to see... as soon as I'm done watching Beauty and the Beast.
They say things happen in threes. I'm not a believer of that theory as I can think on many times when things *didn't* happen in threes, but if they were right (whoever the f* 'they' are) then I would feel that the universe might owe me three good things this week.
The weekend started off with the crummy: C died. Then on Saturday, I noticed that I seemed incredibly tired and my arms really hurt after carrying home my groceries. By Sunday morning, I was pretty much bed ridden. I had caught the flu which was going around the office and I spent an entire 48 hours either in bed sleeping or doing things that didn't involve much thought. To give you an idea about how much thought was too much, a friend had lent me Iron Man on DVD because I had never seen it. After 15 minutes, I turned it off because it required too much thought. Yeah, that sick. The upside is that I didn't really eat much because I couldn't stay awake long enough to make anything. The downside is that I haven't done anything physical in a week. I'm not expecting great things tomorrow. Quite frankly, I'll be happy if I break even.
My third thing happened late last night. I had been giving most of my extra free time this summer to helping organise a BC Tour for Ballet Saamato. We diligently sent off the visa applications in early July and then started the process of waiting... and waiting... and waiting... and being asked to send additional documents... and then waiting... and still more waiting. It was an agonizing situation to be in. We wanted to move forward with the planning, but how can we confirm concerts and sell tickets if we don't even know if they're coming? Ballet Saamato were supposed to arrive tomorrow but two weeks ago we pushed it the flights back to next week. Then last night we got our answer. From my 'things in three', I'm sure you can guess that it was a decline. The Embassy has their reasons (not enough paper trail to prove that the artists will return to Guinea once the trip is over) and we have to accept their answer, but we have already started creating that required paper trail (proof of land ownership, copies of birth records for children, I know it sounds odd but paper trails rarely exist in Africa; when the literacy rate is less than 30%, a piece paper doesn't mean much) in the hopes that we will be able to try this again.
I'm still not entirely back to my usual fabulous self, that will take a few more nights of decent rest and proper nutrition, but I'm hoping to be back to the running by Friday. I've missed a lot of time on my training and although I'm not too worried (yet) that I won't be able to catch up, too much more and I'll have to rethink the run-walk a half-marathon plan. Sigh... perhaps I'll just spend a little more time in the self-pity wallowing pool. Just for tonight; I promise.
Do you guys ever have a week that makes you think 'ugh, why bother'?
Somewhere the sun is shining So honey, don't you cry We'll find a silver lining The clouds will soon roll by.
I've been humming this song since I returned home from my run with THR this morning; in the shower, washing dishes, riding the bus, and eating dinner with my family, this song has repeated again and again in my head. It has been my theme for the day. Yes, positive affirmation to myself, the clouds will soon roll by. In fact, they rolled by this morning on my run.
I have always loved 1920's/30's music and I attribute that love to the BBC mini-series Pennies from Heaven (and to a lesser extent BBC's The Singing Detective although I remember that more for bestowing on me my completely irrational fear of moving scarecrows... don't ask) written by the amazing Dennis Potter and staring the talented Bob Hoskins. I loved that mini-series and watched it over and over again on VHS until the tapes finally stretched; I listened to the soundtrack until I had memorized every song and would dance around the house to them. I loved how even the sad songs sounded hopeful. In times of sorrow, I have returned to those songs and they never fail to make me feel better. I am also sure that in some way my need to randomly burst into song is directly linked to that series.
I hit a bit of a funk after my last blog post. I had started to struggle a bit more with running and I was getting frustrated with it; I wasn't meeting either of the goals I had set for myself (although the amount of water consumed and hours of sleep has increased); German study had hit a road block almost immediately out of the gate thanks to a lost textbook. With feelings of failure weighing on me, I headed back to the West African Dance after two weeks off and succeeded in having a great time while pulling not one, but two muscles. Two! The real kicker is that the move was not the 'throw-your-body-around' move I would have expected to hurt myself on, but a rather tame 'hop-from-one-foot-to-another-while-waving-your-hands' move. It was like a complicated dismount from a pommle horse only to pull your hamstring walking off the mat. I was out of commission for a few days and that just added to the funk.
Then I headed out for my run this morning. As I walked to "our corner" to meet THR, I questioned why I thought to start running in the first place. Did I really need this? Perhaps becoming a more active speedwalker was a better idea? Wasn't I just holding THR back? She is, after all, fitter and faster than I am and I appreciate that she goes at my speed, but at what point am I just more of a nuisance? We're supposed to up to five minute intervals this week, shouldn't I just admit defeat now? Having told so many people how much I was enjoying the running, could I just back out without them commenting? But then, then we started running and a great thing happened: I ran faster than I had before. I pushed myself just hard enough and I went further in my three minute intervals than I had any of the other times. We went so far in fact, that I worried we would run out of route to be run before we ran out of time on the clock. Suddenly, five minutes didn't seem so scary. Sure, I'll struggle the first time, but I'll persevere and it will become easier. I struggled with two minutes when we started and I overcame that. I struggled with three and today I ran faster than I ever thought I could. When I parted from THR after the run, I started to hum and resolved to spend this week seeing the silver linings and not the clouds.
PS. It was less than a year ago that I learned of the American remake of Pennies from Heaven starring Steve Martin. I gave it 20 minutes and then I had to turn it off. I could have gone another 29 years without knowing that it existed; it's just wrong.
