Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Current Questions: Can you move? and/or Are you OK?

The Woody Walk
If you saw me walking through the hallways at work you would have seen the Woody walk. This kind of odd strut where your legs just flop around. The rest day between classes is meant to recover, and I did that just barely. Walking up the two flights of stairs to my apartment was a little much and when the kittens walked on my sore muscles I thought these guys are better than a foam roller.

Upon arriving at class today I learned I was not the only one doing a modified Woody Walk. A lot of us were. It was nice to hear "Can you move?" and talk to the seasoned participants knowing they were sore as well. We also noticed that we lost a lot of people from the Monday class to today's class. Most of the time it's the soreness and people think it won't go away.

We didn't have long to complain about being sore, we were grabbing weights and heading outdoors. Today was the second part of the fitness test. It involved burpees, push-ups, pull-ups, sprints, grapevines, chest presses and something similar to a wall sit.

Now at 6am, it's a little cold and wet outside. Rocking shorts and a short sleeve race shirt was not the best plan. I found out we go outside every class until it snows. We did the name game but it involved "my name is ______, and my favorite exercise is _________, so we're going to _________ for [insert amount or time]"

I was the second to go and the woman in front of me took jumping jacks and I was like, I don't know any other exercises that I would want to do on pavement in a parking lot. So we ran in place. I'm lame like that. As we went around the circle we did reverse planks, planks, speed skaters, then it got to the dude...

Push ups for 1 minute. I wanted to run across the circle and slap this man silly. I did 8, poorly done, not low enough to really count push ups. My hands also dug right into that pavement. She recommends that we go get weight lifting or bicycling gloves because it will save our hands a bit. I'm also going to need some form of workout pant

I kept going as best as I could. My asthma still hates me today and I want all the foods and nothing that I brought to work today. The Woody Walk is still so present and will probably be there until Friday's class starts. So I'm sure to hear "Are you OK?" a bunch of times at work and will love every second of putting my feet up later.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Sometimes fear makes you unstoppable

I took a trip to the emergency room the other week and it scared the hell out of me. I was at my work computer when all of a sudden it became unrecognizable. I was texting with a friend who is an EMT and told him what was going on. I had partial but not all symptoms of a stroke and he suggested I go get checked out. Everything made me dizzy, my extremities were tingling, I had extreme pain shooting through my head. I didn't know how to get up. My speech pattern was stupefied. I was terrified.

I was given medicine through an IV and for three hours I had no headache and I was exhausted. The one thing that is always repeated to me is that if I lost weight the headache disorder could possibly go away all together. With the amount I had lost previously and was managing to maintain, the pain from the initial diagnosis to now had lessened. I knew I needed to take things seriously again.

I'm still not motivated to run. I think and daydream about running in cold wet weather on the trails in Saratoga State Park but right now those are just daydreams.

I do things because they scare the hell out of me. That is what made me sign up for my first half marathon.  So I signed up for a Boot Camp class at Hudson Valley Community College. It's at 6am every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I was (and still am) scared that I'll suck so badly. That I won't be able to complete everything. That I'll be the last "kid" in the group. Some of those fears were totally there this morning.

However, the instructor is awesome and saw the two new people in the class and was great checking in with us and watching our form. This morning was a fitness test so we could get our starting point numbers. 3 minute step test (fuck you stadium stairs), 8 sets of .20sec lunge press sets with an 8 pound weight, stability T pose, laps around the track, planks, jog to the flag pole, push-offs, and more step ups, followed by jog back to the room.

My asthmatic lungs are feeling it hard. My legs are feeling it too. The instructor also took our body measurements and our body fat percentages and because I suck at finding my pulse I have to do resting heart rate tomorrow (I found an app that uses the camera & flash on your iphone to get your pulse)

Wednesday is a push up test (probably sit ups too). Push ups are why I am taking this class. I was right at 50 push ups in one minute before my accident. I would like to be on my way of getting back there. Right now doing 7 modified push ups tire out my shoulder.

So I might not be writing about running as much but I'll still have something to talk about. I know a lot of my friends are like me, not really loving the idea of taking a class and being around all these other people exercising. In the back of my mind, I want to be able to run a Turkey Trot this year but I'm not going to marry myself to that idea yet. For now,  I'm just going to keep lunging forward and keep stepping up.