Come back strong

Today is Saturday. I am actually working later today, I normally don't but it's a favor to a coworker who asked me to. Here is my week in review .....

Sunday night/monday morning my stomach was upset. The kind where it's just grumbly, bloated, and it feels like someone is driving a knife into you. It's not enough to bar me from going to work so I go but I'm miserable. I started feeling muscle soreness all over my body, the kind that usually happens when I have a fever. My boss wouldn't let me go home because he needed time to train the asst manager on something. Great. I suffered through the day, got home and sure enough I had a fever. I got in bed and ate my crackers and apple sauce. By this point I was so cold it actually hurt. I took Tylenol and went to sleep. Luckily the next day I had off but there was a Crossfit clinic at work. I was so excited about this for the last 2 weeks and I knew I wouldn't be able to work out. Tuesday morning I actually felt alot better and my fever was gone, but I was still feeling icky and I knew I couldn't work out. I went to the clinic to learn about the Nano 6 and just spectate. The clinic ended up being alot more informal than I thought it would be. The Reebok rep just explained Crossfit and the history of the Nano/what's new with the 6. I got a free towel and a Nano 6 but unfortunately my shoe was a 9 instead of 9.5 so I have to wait until sometime after the 1st to get the correct size. The workout was super simple and was just Tabatas with squats. 4 people did it in sets of 2 and I helped count their on/off periods and cheer on my partner Cass. I am the only serious weightlifter so most of them were not used to doing all these squats and you could see the pain on their faces. It was fun to be there for even if I was just watching.

I didn't lift on Wednesday either, that was really the last day for the residual "ick" to clear my system and I started to add normal food back in.

Thursday I went to the gym. I still wasn't feeling awesome but I had to move my body and keep my muscles from going soft on me. I just went full hog, heavy deadlifts and all my usual pull stuff.

185 on here, increasing weight next week!

Yesterday morning I did my push day so that meant heavy squat/bench/shoulder press and a bunch of other stuff. I am now lifting heavy for real again, I backed off for awhile and tried to change it up to moderate weight/reps but I just get so bored with that. I LIKE lifting heavy, to me it feels the most challenging and satisfying. On both days I did a run/walk with my husband.

So from being sick and doing nothing for 3 days to 2 a days of heavy lifting and 1 hour run/walk. I am tired in the best possible way :)

I am going to Augusta next week. We are selling our house. Even if we ever do move back (which right now doesn't look likely) we weren't gonna stay in that house long term so we'd end up finding something different. I did love it though. Being back in town will be nice, but it may be the last time we go and that's kinda sad. When I get back I'm organizing my training so it makes more sense. I will now lift 4 times a week (2 push/2 pull, 1 workout might be heavy lifts and the other might be lower weight with some HIIT/conditioning stuff?), then walk for an hour with my husband in the afternoons. So 2 a days. Then probably run on my own once/twice a week and do bootcamp class as time allows. I am also thinking about how to get the right post workout nutrition to fuel all this activity and make me not starving at work. My plan is to go to the gym earlier and come back home, shower there and eat a bagel/egg/cheese sandwich for some post workout carbs and protein.

That about sums it up for now.. coming up, another long break from the gym due to traveling and then back to it again

3 year comparison

I'm back from a little weekend mini trip to see my parents. It's always interesting visiting them, they are a crazy bunch for sure. I had a good time though, didn't eat horrible and got quite a bit of activity in. My mom wanted to take a walk every 5 minutes and normally I'm down for that but - it was HOT, yo. Like 97 degrees every day. One day we got a long walk in before 10am then hung out at the botanical garden for awhile and I was just dying in that hot sun. We walked downtown alot too and even saw a crafts festival. My dad and I toured the naval base on boat which was cool. We also watchd the Olympics on and off while I was there.

Now that I'm back I am trying to buckle down again on my eating habits. I was doing good for awhile then fell off track a little bit. I didn't really gain any weight though so that's good.

This summer I am really noticing my composition changing due to lifting. And honestly I've kind of struggled with it a little. I have put on some fat compared to where I was 3 years ago, because my weight back then was incredibly hard to maintain. I was running alot and pretty much starving myself so I didn't stay that thin for very long. And over 3 years I've slowly slipped on diet and gained weight.

The left is me at the Army Ball in Augusta 2013, the right is me last weekend

I have mixed feelings. I have never had big legs or a big ass and now I have these tree trunk legs. I do love my strong legs, they are all muscle aside from my inner thighs. My whole lower body is just bigger than it's been in my whole life and it's very different from what I am used to. My upper body has always been big and now it's bigger. Up close you can tell I have muscle, but when I stand relaxed my arm fat tends to hide it. The reason I'm comparing these pictures is to help me figure it out in my head, and I think now I know that I want to be kind of a mix of these two. I was way too skinny 3 years ago, my head is way too big for the rest of my body and it doesn't look right. 155 lbs on my 5'8 large frame looks awkward. This was only maintainable for like 2 months anyway. But now I am more pudgy than I'd like. The quads and booty can stay, but the belly has got to get a little smaller. I am hovering around 180 right now. I am thinking a muscular 170-165 is where I wanna be. And you know what - I have gotten more compliments than ever in the last 6 months. "What sport do you play?/what do you do?/you're in such good shape!" so I think if I can just trim a few pounds I'll really notice a difference in my pull ups and running and be in even better shape!

I had an awesome morning in the gym, I don't know if it was my massage last week, some time off, or a little bit of extra food, but I absolutely crushed it. My watch said I burned 500 calories and that's ALOT for a lifting session. I also ran/walked with my husband, he has been doing it every day for the last couple weeks and I join him when I can.

And there's a whole nother week crammed into a post. Until next time ..

Gym, running, life

My muscles are feelin it, yo

Thursday ended up being this rando full body workout I made up on the spot. I was 5 minutes late for bootcamp and their rule is if you miss the 5 minute warm up jog you can't do class. Oh well, that just meant some creative thinking on my part. How could I get some cardio and lifting done on the weights side of the gym? It went something like this

Power cleans #75 -  5 sets of 10 (ooof)
Turkish get ups

Then I loaded up #65 for 10 of each, 3 sets
Deadlift
RDL
Row
Squat
Press
Good morning

Then -
Kettlebell swings
Burpees
Jump rope

That was enough to get me tired.

Stretching buddies

This morning I got a 2.5 mile run in, and a few steps in I realized I forgot my watch. I could have gone like 20 feet back into my house to get it but I was like nahh... I'll go without this time and see what happens. Some people say it's better to run "naked" because you can just dial in to your natural pace and not worry so much about what the clock says. At the end of my run I had some idea of how fast I went because of my Milestone pod, and as it turns out I was somehow a little faster than normal today. I was struggling though - 80 and humid, I didn't have any real pain but my legs were just sort of fatigued this morning. During the first half of my run I noticed a really strong cologne smell that was just lingering around the air. Even without my watch I have a good idea of mile markers on my usual running route. How about this.. I seriously didn't pass the guy until 1/4 mile later that's how strong this stuff was. When I was actually near him I was coughing and practically choking from the stuff, it was so potent and disgusting. It's bad enough that the hot humid air is already trying to choke me to death. Yay, Columbia residents!

Today we got rained out of our climbing trip again but instead we're going to go play some racquetball. My husband got into it while he was stationed in Korea and now we're finally gonna play together

I'm going to be watching some of the Olympics, especially weightlifting. This is the first year I've really been excited about it, maybe because I was never active myself until 2012. Somehow this year I have a better appreciation for the talent of the athletes.

When I'm too hard on myself

It's Thursday, and I'm finally getting back to normal. It took me about a week to get back into the gym due to being ill last week - then on top of that, over the weekend I had girl troubles and also ran out of my blood pressure meds. I felt like shit on Sunday and had to go 3 more days without my meds. Seems like everything falls apart at once sometimes.

Yesterday was my first time back in the gym and it happened to be a deadlift day. We had 1 hour to work with because I missed last week, so at the end we worked on pull ups and some other accessory stuff.

Ever look back on yourself and say "Wow, I was really acting like a douche!" Well that was me yesterday. I was really down on myself in the gym and made alot of comments about how all this stuff was wrong with me right now, how I need to lose weight to get back to where I used to be with pull ups, and while we were doing some lunges my knee started to hurt so that launched a discussion about the various "broken" parts of my body. I felt so tired - my heart was racing and I thought it was about to pop out of my chest. Not having my meds was taking a huge toll. I felt like a weakling struggling to get through this workout which wasn't even anything too crazy challenging aside from the deads. After I left the gym I realized what a whiny little bitch I must have sounded like. I guess it's easy to be your own worst enemy when life doesn't go smoothly. And I am particularly hard on myself, my entire life I have struggled with self esteem issues and as my husband puts it "kicked my own ass before I even started the fight". Yesterday I realized something. No, I may not be lifting as heavy as I want to right now, but I am back where I was 1 year ago when this picture below was taken - I had just gotten my first big PR of 185.

That gym had tiny ass bumper plates but yes, it's 185

Yesterday I did it 3 times and probably could have gone another set - my limiting factor was grip because a week of not doing anything caused my calluses to peel off. This weight was challenging but doable. And best of all, I am having no pain at my injury site. I am feeling it in all the right places as opposed to before when my form was all wrong. Yes, I may be too hard on myself, but I'm making progress. Could I pull 205 on my birthday again this year? Yes, and I'll probably try for 215 at least. 230 is possible with time and training. And while I feel like I've been stuck in the same place forever, I am still pretty strong. When I feel like I'm overweight people always remind me I'm in decent shape. This week I had THREE people ask what my sport was because I looked "strong" or in "good shape" and one person asked me if I was a swimmer - yes, I used to be!

I just realized I gotta cut this short and get over to the gym for bootcamp... so until next time ....