Catch-up

I have not quit, I have not given up. I have not... posted in quite awhile. The last post I made was just before my day of good news, so it is odd that I never got around to writing about the greatest things that have happened to me yet.

I'll cut straight to the point, since two weeks is a lot to recap. Two Fridays ago, I weighed myself. 154lbs. One pound less than the previous time I weighed myself. That's not the good news. The good news was that I lost a total of THREE inches off my hips. Two in one week, three in total. Incredible. I was just elated. I put on my pants, and sure enough, they fit much better than they had a week ago.

Over the last two weeks, I've struggled to maintain a steady workout schedule. First, I was met with a deadline to finish my tissue paper walls in my office so we could sand the floors and move closer to finishing the renovations. Then I ran into some personal issues-- both emotional and physical. I won't get into my personal issues here.

Some of the physical issues had to do with my running. About a week ago while running on the treadmill in front of a window, I discovered that my body swerves back and forth in an S shape when I run. If you were to take a video of me and slow it down, you would see: S, backward S, S, backward S, etc. It's really odd and hard to explain. Picture a very slow wacky waiving inflatable arm flailing tube man, and you've got the idea. I believe this has something to do with the fact that I couldn't seem to run any faster than my 8:57 time.

Three times in a row, I ran a mile in exactly 8:57. I started slow, sprinted at the end, sprinted at the beginning and slowed down at the end, and tried to go for consistency, and still I was getting that time. It was insanely frustrating. I relayed my irritation on the Crossfit forums, and one woman suggested that I slow down, try for two miles and come back to it. The thought of two miles makes me hyperventilate, so I decided to try to push through it. I came up with 8:43. I was ecstatic... and completely out of breath.

I have asthma, so Tony made me call my doctor and get an inhaler, something I haven't had in many years. It was embarrassing to pick up the thing. It immediately brought back memories of middle school and having to use the face mask because some moron doctor I had thought I was too young to figure out how to use an inhaler without it. I never took the mask to school, but being prescribed one was enough to humiliate me forever.

The inhaler doesn't seem to do me much good. I tried using it before I ran twice now, and it seems to just make me think more about breathing too much while running. I find that I have to get into a "zone", where I am semi-conscious when I run. If I focus too much on my breathing, I panic about the possibility of my airways constricting, and of course, they do just that. If I focus too much on my feet, they will wobble and fall in the wrong place.

Finally, my biggest problem with running has been the ball of my left foot. After working on things near the floor at the house, I noticed that from flexing my toes back, my foot was swollen and painful. Almost to the point where I was unable to walk. This has happened before, and I went to the Urgent Care because I couldn't put any pressure on it. They told me I had gout. Gout. I kid you not. I do not have gout. They are idiots.

Finally, I broke down and bought a new pair of shoes. Despite what I've read about thin soles giving your feet more contact with the ground (and therefore greater control over your run), I figured that more cushion was the way to go, and I purchased Nike Plus shoes, along with the running device that plugs into my iPod Nano. I used it for the first time today, and it told me I ran a mile just over 8 minutes. I had forgotten to tell it my stats (weight and height), so although that was exciting, I am not counting that time.

Since I'm on the topic of today's workout, I spent about five minutes on today's official WOD. That wasn't counting the extra round of rowing 250 meters and 15 push presses with 16lb dumbbells. I had forgotten to start my stopwatch, so to punish myself for not going to the gym yesterday, I decided to start over, thus making my total number of rounds 4 instead of three. It wasn't the hardest workout I've had, although I think that push presses would have been harder with a bar. Dumbbells are easy to move independently, the bar forces your arms to move simultaneously.

I have been thinking about my push-up skills a lot lately. I can not do more than 10 push-ups without feeling sick and forgetting to breathe. Since this movement is so essential to upper body strength, I feel like I need to improve it dramatically. The WODs are helping to achieve this, but I decided it's not enough. After reading about the 100 handstand push-up challenge, I decided to do a similar thing with regular push-ups, working my way to being able to complete even a single HSPU.

The way the HSPU challenge works is on day one, you start with a single HSPU. Day two, you do two, day three you do three, and so on. I know I can do 10 push-ups without stopping, so today I did 11. Tomorrow I will do 12, and I will keep going until I can do enough where I feel I am ready to start elevated push-ups. At that time, I will start again at five, or 10, adding one every day until I increase the elevation. Some day, I will do HSPUs, and I can't fucking wait.

One last thing, and I will consider myself caught up. I know I have mentioned the Zone diet in the past, and I have been trying to follow it. It has confounded me. I know I'm supposed to avoid refined carbs and eat more veggies, but I needed a more definitive base of knowledge to be able to succeed, so I ordered the book Mastering the Zone. It finally came in the mail today, and I plan on reading it immediately.