In Which Eilyd Regains Her Mojo

[Eilyd]

I totally fell off the horse/boat/train/spaceship last challenge. I threw in the towel when I had every reason to keep going and pretty strong motivation for sticking to it. Now I will fix it.

 

Now I'm experiencing a planned employment outage, so I cannot say that I don't have time.

 

Goal: 30 minutes of exercise per day.

Gym days: Strong Lifts 5x5 (3x per week) and Tabata sprints

Off days: Walking and yoga

 

There is no try. There is only do or do not. I will do this.

[Magma]

In support!

[tenaciousglee]

Get it, girl! Thanks for the support on my thread.

[Eilyd]

Thanks

[Lady Eleventy]

Go for it! 

[Xerla]

Oh you're up for the mini challenge!

I'm very sorry for my lack of support recently

30 minutes a day for a week, super doable!

Let us know what kind of exercise you do each day XD

I'm sure you'll nail this one!

[Eilyd]

So yesterday was supposed to be gym day, but there's 4 miles of the main shopping district between our apartment and the gym, so traffic was insane since it was 2 days before Christmas. Instead I did some Whatever Feels Right stuff at home:

 

10 Non-jumping burpees (to be merciful to the downstairs neighbors)
10 KB Clean and press

10 Bent over KB rows

5   Pull-ups

30 Goblet squats

Something else I don't remember

 

Also, just to make life more of a challenge, I was changing my razor blade on Saturday and ended up slicing my thumb and middle finger. So certain grip-related things are tricky (like pull-ups). Benching on Saturday was hard because I couldn't use my thumb to brace, so it was a lot of a balancing act! It'll be fine by the next heavy weight day though.

Hey Xerla! You have nothing to apologise for, dear! You have been deathly ill and recovering and being awesome. I dropped last challenge for pathetic reasons. I am always glad to have your support.

[Magma]

I'm super impressed with your commitment. I love that you're coming up against obstacles and finding your own way. I'm so grateful for your support through these holiday challenges. I went for a run today and it felt so good to think about others out there figuring out how to keep what's important  to them when everyone else around them is doing something quite different. Good work and Go Team!  

[Xerla]

How's your finger and thumb? Hopefully it will recover soon so you can still do the workouts

[Magma]

Hey lady! Thanks for the check in, I just added my update, how you doin?

[Eilyd]

Thanks for the encouragement, Magma! I got fed up with my excuses last challenge, so now I'm trying to eliminate that habit.

 

Christmas eve: lost 3 hours of my time in the morning somehow, so the rest of the day was frantic packing and gift-wrapping. I did work in 10 minutes of yoga during a lull, so I'm crediting myself for that effort.

 

Christmas day! WOOOHH so much fun. Nerds have the best Christmases. (Laser pointers + cut glass vases + photography, debating the finer points of drug addiction, random political debate, homemade eggnog with rum and HOBBIT) And THE WHOLE FAMILY went for a walk after dinner. I honestly don't know how long it was, but I think it was 20-30 minutes.  YAY MOVEMENT.

Finger and thumb are pretty good. They're plastered over with super glue and healing nicely.

[Lady Eleventy]

Sounds like a great christmas to me! Glad you had some serious fun, it's always good for the soul and getting in some exercise too, great job! Keep up thegood work!

[Eilyd]

I just went back to review my introduction thread from 8 months ago. It made me notice two things:

 

1. My weightlifting progress has really stagnated--certainly due to my negligence, but it was interesting to see that snapshot of myself at that time.

 

2. I had forgotten my main goals. I have been caught up in work-life goals, which are good, but not to the exclusion of health goals. I had forgotten that I wanted to be able to run multiple miles. I had also forgotten that I wanted to pick up 3 martial arts.
 

I had lost, in the mire of the here-and-now, the immediate desire for these things, and my goals regressed from "I WILL DO THIS" to "Someday I will be like that".

 

I'm going to regain that.

[Lady Eleventy]

I'd suggest writing them down and posting them somewhere where you can't miss them. Next to your bed or on your bathroom mirror so you don't forget them again. I put my workout schedule and goals on the wall next to my bed so when I get up every morning I see them and remember what I am doing and why I am doing it. Kind of puts things in perspective and helps me maintain my umph  ^.^

[Eilyd]

I am thinking about that.

 

Went to the gym tonight too! Since I did double today, I feel like that somewhat makes up for Christmas eve and the short walk yesterday. It felt so good to deadlift again! I really need to get back up to DL's and squats that are heavier than me, though.

 

Heading to bed so that I can get up at a reasonable time!

[Xerla]

Merry Christmas Eilyd!!

Visiting intro thread is a great thing to see your progress!

I visited my introduction and previous challenges thread and I realized that I was also kind of stagnated since the last 2 challenges.

Worry not, there will always be new challenges to do all the things in your introduction thread XD

[Eilyd]

Ah, Merry Christmas to you, dear! I think you have not stagnated, though--you have been doing similar things, but always with more vigor. And of course this past challenge the best thing to do for your body was to rest and recuperate!

 

Today:

Yoga

Shower

Pack for the weekend

Eat (I've been forgetting this)

[Eilyd]

Went out of town for the weekend.

 

Saturday: Walked and did 30 min of yoga with my sister in law. It was a good day.

 

Sunday: Watched the Hobbit! And family nerd-raged. Did not exercise. But sort of did double on Saturday?

 

Today: Just got home. Planning to go to the gym.

[tenaciousglee]

Go girl!  Hit that gym!  Regain that mojo!

 

[Eilyd]

Grahh! Mum called last night; they're putting their/my dog down today, so we went up to say goodbye to him and cuddle him. And stayed until 11:00. Going to work double hard today.

[Eilyd]

Workout:

 

3 rounds:

5 pull-ups
10 goblet squats

10 push-ups

 

1 round:

5 pull-ups

10 goblet squats

20 knee push-ups

 

20 minutes of yoga etc.

 

I feel like this is enough to almost excuse yesterday's negligence.

[Eilyd]

Happy new year! I started this year off on a good note:

 

Slept 'til 11:00, had an egg-peas-cheese scramble, then did a WHOLE HOUR of yoga. It felt so good. I haven't done a bikram-style routine in months, and this was a great reminder of why it's a useful practice. It gave me some life-related epiphanies too:

 

1. In a balancing pose, you have to pull yourself in two directions. But it is this pulling back and forth that makes me stronger, and enables me to achieve balance. In life I won't be able to achieve balance without perfecting the tug-of-war between competing responsibilities.

 

2. Focus is crucial in life and yoga. If you lose your point of focus, you wobble and fall over and it's very easy to spend most of your time correcting little things that wouldn't even be a problem if you were focusing.

 

3. It is more important for me to focus on my pose than on others'. If I try to correct others when I am also unsteady, then I will both negate my own efforts and frustrate theirs (because I am giving advice but not a good example). In life, I should also take this into account, because I am hasty to offer advice while I am not any better off. I should only correct others when in a position of strength.

[Eilyd]

Well, that's good that I did a whole hour on Wednesday, because I didn't do anything yesterday. Took my mother-in-law to go visit some houses (she wants to move out here), and found myself an hour away from home with a minor snowstorm making the roads unappetizing. It took an hour and a half to get home and I almost fishtailed into two concrete road barriers. (I am not very good at driving in snow.) So when I got home I was all, "Give me food, give me booze, and give me games, because I don't have the mental fortitude for great responsibility."

 

But today I did a half-hour of yoga before my phone interview for the Awesome Company of Awesome. And I think both the yoga and the interview went well. I'm very excited in a trying-not-to-get-excited way.

[tenaciousglee]

Casual yay!

Also glad to hear you arrived home safely.

[Xerla]

Oh things are going awesome!! Glad to know that you made it through the long road and the snowstorm. Never had a snow here, but I imagined it must be very hard driving through it..