Always Something.

There is always something.  There will always be something that has the potential to slow down progress or derail plans.

The last few months I've easily found that "something".  September and October was football season.  My youngest sons practice and game schedule did not meet up with my Crossfit schedule.  I actually let that derail me.  It was a set back.

But once that season was past I got back on track.  I'm in a regular schedule again.  It's been awesome.  Even in November, when I had signed up with Nanowrimo to be a Municipal Liaison and really commit to writing a novel.  I didn't let that become a time sink for me.  I made my priority -  myself.

Thanksgiving week didn't even derail me this year.  I may not have made it to the gym, but I did plot out a one mile and a two miles course through the neighborhood.  I set baseline times on each walk and logged a lot of steps.  Lots of room for improvement there.  And I learned which socks not to wear with my walking shoes.  So, you know, silver lining.

Now I have another wrench being thrown in the works.  For a brief 6 week time period, my oldest son has a schedule that will mess with my gym schedule.  But I think I've figured out that it's only a few days a week that it's a slight problem.  And it's only a slight problem.  So I go to the unloaded class instead of my normal Crossfit class.  I can also do some rowing, and some shoulder work, and the prescribed accessory work.  Maybe this is a good thing.  

One thing I am learning is that I need to be a little more flexible.  I'm made for living on a time table.  Perhaps I need to loosen up a bit.

Starting now.

Let's see how this goes!

I feel like I'm Starting Over

I feel like I'm starting over.  Partly because, well, I'm starting over.  I took some major steps backwards.  It's very frustrating.  I feel cheated.  I am unable to take a moment off from training or eating well, or I start slipping.  And it's a slippery slope.  I take time "off" from working out and gain a little weight. I gain weight, I get depressed.  I get depressed, I eat.  I eat, I gain weight and don't want to work out.

I quit the nutrition program when I couldn't justify the cost.  And when football season hit, I had trouble making time for the gym.  I wasn't eating well and wasn't exercising.  My shoulder was as painful as it had been all year.  I was worrying that I had a torn rotator cuff.

I'm unable to do overhead work at this time.  Though, now that I'm working with Mobility Mike, I'm getting my shoulder feeling better and over head work is getting easier.  I used to *love* OH squats.  But now I'm struggling with them.  I'm excited to get that back.   And I'm having trouble hanging from the bar.  I haven't been able to do pull ups yet, but right now I'm afraid that I can't do knee raises either.  I'm freaking out a little about that.

I've gained a bunch of weight.  I'm not back at my pre-crossfit weight. But I'm pretty unhappy with where I am.  And if I don't get some control of myself I'll be there soon.    I'm back to going to the gym regularly.  And I've got a plan to get a walk in 3-4 times per week.  I mapped out a 2 mile route and a one mile route and I've set a base line for both.  I'm anxious to improve my times.  I'm concerned about the changing weather and the likelihood of walking in bad weather.  But I've got a plan to get started anyway.

My hardest struggle is the kitchen.  I have got to change the way I eat again.  I've got to get back to what I was doing when I was on the nutrition program.  This weekend I made granola and I'm working on shopping list a meal plan.  I'm back to logging my food every day. And I'm struggling with feelings of unfairness.  So many people don't have to manage their eating this much.  But then I think back on all the people I knew in Weight Watchers who really did have to log their food.  And some had a much bigger struggle than I did.

I can do this.  Life isn't fair.  I have to fight for my health.  But I have positives that I don't have to fight for and other people might envy.  I hope so anyway!  

So I'm off to do my meal planning for the week.  It's Christmas time now.  My first Christmas party is this weekend and I'll be ready for it.  I'm bringing my own drink (no alcohol) and a big salad, and a plan.  I will win this battle.

What the heck?!

What the heck happened?!

I was going to Crossfit and had signed up for a nutrition program.  I was getting better at running and feeling great, other than my shoulder.

Then, I decided that I really can't afford to keep going to the nutrition thing.  I was seeing slow progress and spending a lot of money on it.  If I followed the plan that I was on, it should have been easy.  But I didn't stick with it.  I didn't have someone telling me to do it, so I didn't.

Then, football season hit.  I planned ahead and had a freezer full of crockpot meals ready to cook.  I organized a meal swap with other football moms.  I organized a car pool so I only had to drop off or pick up the boys and I was left with plenty of time to get to the gym.  But then, daylight became scarce and the coaches kept pushing the end of practice back and I didn't have enough time to get from the gym to the boys. The coaches got mad if parents were late because they had to sit with the boys, often in the rain this October, and definitely in the cold and dark.  So I cut back on the gym time and only went the nights that practice was scheduled to end later.  And then I cut gym time out all together, because I couldn't get there fast enough and we added a kid to the car pool.

At the same time, my should pain had increased.  I became concerned that I had very big problem and could no longer avoid going to the doctor to have it checked out.  All I could see was dollar sign eyeballs and I don't want to spend my money that way.  My coach asked one of the Crossfit members, who is a doctor (I didn't want to ask while she was off duty) if she would check me out.  She did a few movement tests and pinpointed the exact pain that I was having and reassured me that it wasn't a torn rotator cuff, but was likely a rotator impingement.  That is something that takes time to fix, but no surgery.

I have gained weight. A lot of it.  A stupid amount for the work that I'd put in over the last 3 years.  I've almost undone all that progress.  In 12 weeks.  My winter clothes don't fit.  Because all the bigger clothes that didn't fit me any more as I lost the inches were donated.  I don't have them anymore.  I didn't want to keep fail safe clothes.
I have lost progress.  I tried hanging from the bar in class (Yes, I'm back to regular Crossfit schedule, only every day is scary again), and I could barely do it.  My shoulder hurt and it was hard!
We did Crossfit Total this week, and while I did PR the back squat and the total, I couldn't budge any more than my previous 1RM press, and didn't even touch my 1RM deadlift.

I have a lot of work to do to get back to where I was even three months ago.  And I've already started it.  I'll try to keep everyone posted.

I'm still here!  It's been ages since I have checked in here.  And both nothing, and everything, has changed! 

I'm still fighting the battle. I'm still improving.  I'll try to recap.

I've been at Crossfit Post Falls for coming up on three years already.  I just hit a new one rep max on several lifts, I've improved my deadlift, and I've been hitting PR's on some of the WOD's.  I'm still frustrated at not being able to do pull ups, but I also haven't really been working hard on them.  I'm able to consistently do 6 double unders in a row, and have set a goal of being able to do 20 in a row before the end of the year. 

I am battling a shoulder "injury".  I'm not at all sure what I've done, and I actually believe it stems from sleeping on it somehow.  It seems to be improved with some mobility exercises and plenty of fish oil, but it's stubbornly persistent.  At the time it's keeping me from some of the things I want to improve.  Snatch's are difficult with shoulder pain, as well as pull ups, and oddly enough double unders really bother it!  Even overhead squats were too much to handle recently, and those are my favorite.

I've signed up for a Wellness Program through Crossfit Post Falls.  I'm getting some very specific help for my goals.  And daily meal planning.  The meal planning is worth signing up.  It is saving me from trying to figure out what I need and I'm supported.  The meal plans are changing and evolving depending on what seems to be working.  But meal planning isn't all there is to the Wellness Program.  The other part I love is added accessory work.  I'm given specific things to work on before or after class.  These are not random things that are chosen for everyone, these are accessory work that is designed to help me reach my goals.  For awhile we were just working on shoulder mobility, but it has evolved into other things.  Last week, I was introduced to rowing intervals.  And I *love* them.  They totally burn me out, but it feels like it goes so fast and gives me a mini goal for each interval.  This week, I'm adding in a run.  Just a little 400 meter run.  But it's a run that I have been unable to make myself do without walking.  At this point, I believe that to be all in my head. I'm sure I can run that far and this week, I'll prove it to myself.

I signed up for the Crossfit Open again.  I had hoped to do at least on of the WOD's Rx, but I did end up scaling all of them.  There wasn't a single one that had all moves or weights that I could do without scaling.  I could have done parts of most of them Rx, but that wouldn't have helped my team.  Our gym divided into teams for some fun intramural competitions.  I knew that I wouldn't be able to help my team a lot with the points for placing, but I was able to provide team Spirit, and our team took first place, partly because of the spirit points.  I do have some baselines in Open WOD's now and will only improve.

In May, I did a Spartan Sprint.  It was both the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and the most rewarding.  I really should do a full post on that race.  My oldest son joined my team and really pulled me through it.  I couldn't have finished without my team, and Nathan specifically.  He was simply amazing.  And he showed me some of my own potential.  I won't be signing up for another one of those until I'm able to do more of the obstacles without the help of my teammates.  But I will eventually do another one.  Perhaps I'll even aim for the trifecta and get all three of the Spartan races in one season.  But not quite yet.

This weekend I did a 5k mud run, called the Dirty Dash.  I had signed up in January with a friend.  That friend wasn't able to attend it after all, so I spent the last week and a half talking myself into doing it alone.  I did end up talking a gym friend (and Spartan teammate) into joining me, so I wasn't alone.  I ran quite a lot of that race.  I even surprised myself with how much running I was able to do.  (which makes me think the 400 meters is totally doable).  There was a big water slide at the 2 mile mark.  The pumps had stopped working, so we had to stand and wait.  The weather was chilly, it never hit 70 that morning.  Standing and waiting for the pumps to work, then sliding down in the cold water put an end to my running.  I got cold and it really affected my endurance.  It was pretty fun to reach the finish line on this course as well.  I was able to do all the obstacles (except the walls) all by myself with little fear.  I'm excited to do this one with the boys next year.

I'm feeling confident again.  I'm in a great place in my training and my eating.  I'm excited about all that this life has to offer. 
Make it a good one!! 

LET CRAP GO!!

I haven't posted in such a long time!! So much has happened between then and now and yet I haven't gotten very far on my goal. I am posting this tonight, because I felt that it was important enough to make the effort to share it here. This week has been an interesting one and I have been reminded of something that we all know but find it hard to put into practice on a day to day basis. Sometimes we try so hard to get to a goal, and it seems that no matter how much we try, and how much we do all the right things, we seem to go 2 steps forward and 1 step back, or in some cases, 3 steps back! It happens to me all the time as I know it does to a lot of you also. I have been trying to get to my goal for a while now. It is not actually a weight goal, more of a body goal, but to get there I still need to lose a certain amount of body fat and while they are not my only measure by any means, the scale is my most regular measure. It hasn't been kind to me for a while now no matter what I seem to do and I finally realised why. It is amazing what happens when you just let crap go! I got sick this week, and because I only have 5 weeks until the marathon & 7 weeks until the Kokoda Challenge, I knew that I couldn't afford to be sick for long. So I let crap go. I stopped stressing about what I wasn't getting done in a day. I stopped worrying about all the things I should be doing. I made sure I ate right, I still exercised but toned it down a lot, and I made sure I got a decent amount of sleep. And I didn't stress about anything. Not the scale. Not the work I wasn't doing. Nothing. The only thing that changed this week was the stress on my body and mind, and a lot more sleep, and I had better results from half of this week than I have in the last 6 weeks combined. Sometimes, we just need to LET CRAP GO!! Until the next time, good luck on this hard road that we travel! It may be hard, but I know it makes me stronger every day & I hope the same applies to you all!! Shari