Friday, February 21, 2014

2014 - Week 7 Recap

When it rains, it definitely pours!  These past few months have really been a challenge on the parental front...my dad has had some chronic health issues for years, which unfortunately came to a head at the very end of 2013 resulting in a trip to emergency.  Thankfully things are in control now and he's doing OK but I guess the parent health gods have decided to really test my mettle and my mom is now dealing with health issues which also resulted in a trip to emergency the other night.  After seven and a half hours sitting in emergency with my mom, we were released and she's doing OK so far, thank goodness. We're running tests on her to see where things are at because my mom is also one of those people who never, ever, ever go see the doctor.  Like as in ever.  Soooo, things are complicated to say the least, and me being the only child here in town with her (she speaks almost no English), I've been helping her out with this whole situation as daughter/translator.

So...why am I blabbering on about this?  Well, as you can imagine I'm stressed to the gills...worried about my parents, frustrated because my Chinese sucks (even though it has improved greatly over the past few weeks!) and tired beyond belief.  It was interesting because the one thing that has been my saving grace is exercise...you see, for me exercise is the one thing that I can guarantee will make me feel better when I'm feeling this way.  It clears my head, gets me outside in the fresh air...just the feeling of putting one foot in front of another is like recharging me somehow and makes me feel like I can handle things far better.   In the days after the issues with my mom started up, all I wanted to do was to get outside and move my body.   I was desperately looking forward to my first bootcamp after my mom's trip to Emergency, and it was weird because I should have been dog tired after class...Jason ran, burpeed and get out of bedded us to death, but I felt so much better after and ready to deal with things.  So I'm posting this to say that I'm so incredibly thankful that I have exercise as part of my life and that it truly is something I'm so grateful for.  And yes, I did put a note in my Jar of Awesomeness about this...hah!

So last week's workouts:

Sunday:  strength
Love strength work day!  Shoulder is feeling good so I bit the bullet and have committed to personal training at PISE!  Yay!  OK, I've committed verbally so it's not fully a done deal...but as soon as I hand over the old credit card, the deal is sealed.  Look out for some posts on how I'm doing with that.

Monday:  rest
Hubs and I made a deal that if we made sure we worked out Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, we could sleep in on Monday...and sleep in we did.  Ha!

Tuesday:  treadmill

Wednesday:  bootcamp/swimming
More side swimming and have added in rotating from my side to my front...I can only do that for one side though before I start flubbing things up.  So much coordination!

Thursday:  rest

Friday:  bootcamp

Saturday:  10K run
I gotta say...our running has not been at the levels it used to be at in terms of frequency or intensity, but it's all good.  Just getting ourselves out there is the key thing or at least that's what I keep telling myself.  Ha! 


Monday, February 10, 2014

2014 - Week 6 Recap

Happy Family Day, folks!  I've been waiting for this day forever...life hasn't seemed to have slowed down much lately and I was super duper crazy looking forward to hanging out with Hubs today with nothing to do, and that's EXACTLY what I've done today.  Yesterday I was a woman possessed...I had a to do list a mile long because I wanted nothing, nothing that would niggle me and call my name as I sat around on my duff today.  After a luxurious sleep in this morning, I whipped up a yummy breakfast of gluten, egg and dairy free pancakes (super delish!), homemade hash browns and bacon.  Yep, we had bacon...in our defense it was the low sodium version and it was fab-u-lous.  Hah!  Anyways, I'm glorying in today's downtime to just do whatever strikes my fancy...sometimes you just need these kind of days that recharge your batteries.

WORKOUTS:

Just checked...$27 in my workout jar so far...yeehaw!

Sunday - strength
It's like it's meant to be...in April my annual membership that I have with my bootcamp runs out, and I was thinking that I might do try something different.  I'd still like to go to bootcamp some days because I love the cardio workout so will get a per class punchcard, but I'd been sort of thinking about doing some personal training once my membership runs out.  Well, in the latest PISE newsletter there's a deal going on where if I sign up for 16 sessions, I get two extra!  I've been wanting to do this for awhile now because I really wanted to focus on building strength and if I start in April, that will give my right shoulder ample time to really get healed up.  So...I think I'm gonna do it!  A combo of strength training at PISE, a few bootcamp sessions per week, runs with Hubs and swimming...perfect!  I'd been feeling in a bit of a funk with my workouts lately so this adds some variety...variety is the spice of life, right?

Monday - circuit

Tuesday - rest

Wednesday - circuit/swimming
Brrrrrr...Victoria was hit last week with a bit of a cold spell.  OK, OK...for those that live in the prairies, minus 10 is not that cold but us coastal folks are not used to it, and it's a damp kinda cold!  Whine.  Anyways, D wasn't feeling all that hot and it was freaking cold so I decided to do a circuit at home.  Evening was swim class...I have to say, I'm super loving the swim classes and look forward to them!  I feel like a bit of a fraud though...having taken lessons before, everything we've done up to this point I already knew how to do so my instructor treats me like some kind of superstar student when I'm soooo not.  This class I actually got to try something new and I nailed it!  I was never able to get the hang of swimming on my side before, and finally got the hang of it and was swimming on my side like nobody's business.  Small victories, folks...ha!

Thursday - rest

Friday - bootcamp

Saturday - circuit

FOOD:
Woohoo, our month anniversary for our gluten, egg and dairy free living!  So how's it been, you ask?  So far, it's been not too bad...sometimes it gets a bit hard when you see ads for stuff like pizza on TV, but there's enough options nowadays that it hasn't been that hard.  Allergen free products have really, really come a long way in the past five years...when I did my food sensitivity testing previously, I had to cut out wheat, egg and dairy (amongst other things) and there was basically tapioca bread (truly awful) and these crackers that tasted like twigs.  Blah.  Hubs' skin has improved a lot...it still gets red some days but it feels a lot smoother and less dry and flaky then it has before.  And there's so many recipes out there that we can still eat...I went to a Mexican food cooking class last week because I figured it would be free of gluten, eggs and dairy or I could make modifications.  Class was fabulous, and I made everything from the class this week...who said you had to feel deprived?

Sunday, February 2, 2014

2014 - Week 5 Recap

Oy vey...watching the Superbowl and while a tiny part of me is kinda happy that the Seahawks are winning, I feel a wee bit bad for Hubs because the Broncos are his boys...and I do kinda like Peyton.  I have that vaguely sinking feeling that I did when I watched the Canucks in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup in 2011...argh, must go lie down in the fetal position NOW...still not over it.  Sigh.

Anyways, short and sweet recap this week...

WORKOUTS:

Sunday:  strength
So far, so good...I kept the weights relatively light still and added just a teensy bit more!  Things felt a bit tight after but I made sure I did lots of stretching and mobility and my shoulder and glutes are still feeling OK.  I keep having to remind myself to be patient...I've been off with some sort of injury or another since June, so I need to just GO SLOW.

Monday:  treadmill

Tuesday: rest

Wednesday: bootcamp/swim class
Killer bootcamp class with Jason!  It was pouring rain out so we worked out underneath cover of the stadium at one of our locations...it was all legs and I was absolutely wiped out for the rest of the day.  Evening was swim class...have now progressed to kicking and stroking with arms!  There are only six sessions so I'm at the halfway point...I'm thinking I'm not going to master breathing or feel comfortable enough going into the deep end, so I'm going to sign up for another few more sessions.

Thursday: rest

Friday: bootcamp

Saturday: 10K run
Still feeling like I'm going through the motions a bit...I've got more of my mojo back, but this run was not one of our most stellar.  Both Hubs and I felt a bit meh...normally when we're running, it goes by relatively quickly...this time it felt like forever until we were done! 

FOOD:

Hubs is doing so awesome, I can't get over it.  No cheats or cravings on the "free" diet, even though I did discover that the cookies that I thought were gluten free, weren't (they were, in my defense, egg and dairy free though).  His skin is looking awesome and he's had another positive side effect...he's dropped some weight!  I was looking at Hubs the other day and noticed that his clothes looked looser and voila...five pounds lost just like that!  I'm sure cutting back all the carbs and reducing the inflammation has helped.