Elsfaire Respawns

[elsfaire]

Elsfaire opened her eyes and shook her head. She had vague memories of handstands, Pushup Quidditch, jogging for over 10 minutes, and pull-ups. That contrasted sharply with her current stiffness, tingly arm when waking up in certain positions, and getting winded and sore walking up her driveway. What happened?

Memories of the past 8 months went by in a flash and all blurred together: hour after hour and day after long day spent sitting in a desk chair and staring at a screen. Weekends that were indistinguishable from weekdays, and an increasing number of purchased meals instead of home-cooked. Oh yeah, work happened.

She hated how she felt – weak, tired, anxious. Even more, she hated the track this put her on. She did not want to be the 85-year old woman who shuffled across the room with help and was tired. She wanted to be like the 100 year old woman who won her age class (80 and up) in the 100 meter dash.

Elsfaire made a decision for what was probably the 100^th time during these months, but this time was different. She lifted her arms overhead and took a big breath in, releasing as she bent down to (almost) touch her toes (Another skill to regain…). She reached one foot back and felt the discomfort of seldom stretched, seldom used muscles. Pushing through the stiffness and awkwardness of a rusty skill, she finished some sun salutations and said, “yes, I am someone who DOES this.”

 

Hello again, NFers! I have been away for a long time, and was struggling for months before that. But I have missed the amazing Nerd Fitness community here and the motivation you all helped me find for getting fit. I have lost a lot of ground. Not quite all the way back to where I started over 2 years ago on NF, but a lot farther back than I want to be. So this challenge I am respawning. I know I am starting late, but so what - it is time to start.

My goals are simple:

• ·         MOVE! Get out for a walk or restart C25K at least 3 times/week.

• ·         Regaining strength. Do a bodyweight workout at least 2x a week.

• ·         Stretch. Do stretching, yoga, or other, fun but rusty skills at least 2 x a week.

For the purposes of this challenge, if I spend any time on it at all, it is a win. If I do 3 stretches then get interrupted, it counts. If I plan on a 20 minute walk and it ends up being 5, it counts. Considering that I have had a LOT of times the past few months when I would barely break 2,000 steps/day for days at a time, I am celebrating EVERYTHING as I start to get back on track.

I hope to do some 1 minute AMRAPS of the basic BW exercises to help me see my improvement. I learned in past challenges that it helps me see progress when I am likely to discount it otherwise.  

 

I hope you will join me!

 

[Elastigirl]

Hi there -glad to see you again!

[Lara]

Welcome back! We're ready to celebrate your success!

[elsfaire]

2 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Hi there -glad to see you again!

 

Glad to see you again, too! I have been missing that Elastigirl badassery.

 

1 hour ago, zenLara said:

Welcome back! We're ready to celebrate your success!

 

Thanks, ZenLara! Toothless gifs give EXACTLY the kind of encouragement I like. You're awesome!

[karinajean]

helloooo! welcome back!

[elsfaire]

helloooo! welcome back! [emoji4]

Helloooo! Great to see you too! [emoji4]

[elsfaire]

Ok, recap of my first challenge days:

Yesterday I got out and walked. It wasn't super long -just a half-lap of the neighborhood- but considering that my ankle was really sore from yard work on Sunday, it was definitely a win. We also ended up running into a couple of our neighbors and chatting for awhile - Yay, humans!

 

You might be wondering what kind of yard work would make my ankle sore... Our front yard is a big hill that essentially turned into an abandoned lot the last couple of years after we had to take down a few trees. We FINALLY decided enough was enough and landscaped most of it. We had some help, but on Sunday we were finishing up the top part near the grassy patch - being a human roto-tiller, working some good dirt into the clay, and getting rid of these nasty fibrous-root weedy shrub things. Apparently, my ankles got quite a workout digging for hours on the steep hillside and yanking these weeds out using leverage. My wrists are sore, too. Before/current pics will come soon - I need to pull "before" pics from hubby's computer.

 

Today, we did a full lap around the neighborhood and some stretching. Yay! It sounds like such a small amount of activity to get excited about compared to what i was doing for awhile, but it is SO much more than I have been doing for months.

 

I am so ready to stop being this:

 

And move more towards this (again. Never got there, but I was on the way):

 

[Lara]

You've already started and that's the main thing to do Be patient and keep going on. You'll come back to your former fitness level... and beyond!

[annyshay]

So glad to see you!  I've made a lot of backward steps in some areas, but NF always reminds me of good choices.  Plus, rebels have a great way of reminding us that we get strong and awesome-r each time we respawn.

 

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

Respawning and regaining fitness levels is TOUGH.  So hats off to coming back and fighting for who you really are!!!

[lucky fire dragon]

all the wise words above  so true

 

Full power garden landscaping, walking and stretches...  you are starting off magnificently.

Hope you are enjoying a lovely weekend admiring the work you've done

[Waanie]

I'm glad you're back, we missed you! It seems wise to let every little thing count, no matter how small. Before you know it, the habits are back and you'll rock those handstands again . Do you still have those big beany bags? The bailout of handstands on those looked like soooo much fun .

 

Good luck with the remaining 3 weeks!

[elsfaire]

On 5/13/2016 at 7:31 PM, annyshay said:

So glad to see you!  I've made a lot of backward steps in some areas, but NF always reminds me of good choices.  Plus, rebels have a great way of reminding us that we get strong and awesome-r each time we respawn.

 

 

I am glad to see you, too! I think I  needed NF to remind me that progress is not linear - ups and downs are all part of the process. This, too, can be used well.

 

On 5/14/2016 at 10:15 AM, Chris-Tien Jinn said:

Respawning and regaining fitness levels is TOUGH.  So hats off to coming back and fighting for who you really are!!!

 

Thank you!!! I am not looking forward to the soreness and such, but I am looking forward to feeling strong and confident again.

 

10 hours ago, lucky fire dragon said:

all the wise words above  so true

 

Full power garden landscaping, walking and stretches...  you are starting off magnificently.

Hope you are enjoying a lovely weekend admiring the work you've done

 

Thank you! Weekend was good enough - I have teenagers, so that always ends up shaping the weekend a bunch.

 

6 hours ago, Waanie said:

I'm glad you're back, we missed you! It seems wise to let every little thing count, no matter how small. Before you know it, the habits are back and you'll rock those handstands again . Do you still have those big beany bags? The bailout of handstands on those looked like soooo much fun .

 

Good luck with the remaining 3 weeks!

 

Hi Waanie! I missed you, too. We do still have the giant beanbags. I think I need to try a few handstands tomorrow.

 

I am so glad you all stopped by! I am feeling so very loved right now.

 

Friday -

Not much of anything. I had a short, bad night of sleep on Thursday, and a lot of stress at work, so I didn't end up doing much except a few minutes of stretching.

 

Saturday -

Did some half-hearted digging. I thought we were going to leave the "herb garden" until next year, but I got a surprise late birthday/Mother's Day present of a spending budget to get some herb plants. I was not quite in the mood for being a human roto-tiller again, though, so I did not clear as many weed areas as I could have. So, my plants are still sitting on the wall instead of planted.

 

I also made cake so we could celebrate oldest's 17th birthday, and Fifteen went to help at a charity car wash all day and got a horrible sunburn.

 

Sunday -

Today was weird emotionally. Once I did some jouralling and got back to more stability, I helped Fifteen with making a plaster mask (well, gave instruction. He doesn't like much "help"), and the Hobbit and I went for a walk at a big creek. It was an easy walk, but we were moving so it counts.

 

Week 1 Goal Recap:

MOVE! - YES! Got out to walk 3 times.

Strength - Nope. Did not do any bodyweight at all, though did do a bit of digging which helps a bit.

Stretch - YES! Did at least a few minutes of stretching a few times this week.

 

[Lara]

Don't worry if you're not strength training yet. You've barely started to move and need to slowly keep up. Anyway, I would definitively consider digging as a strength AND stamina training...

[Waanie]

I agree with Lara, you're coming back from almost nothing to a lot of exercise. Walking, digging, stretching, it is way more than you did over the past couple of months. Give your body some time to adapt, and you'll get as active again as a year ago . Exercise should mostly be fun, not a chore .

[Lara]

28 minutes ago, Waanie said:

Exercise should mostly be fun, not a chore

 

^This^ It took me time to understand that, but life is much better now

[annyshay]

So much wisdom here already, so I'll just give you this...

 

[karinajean]

oh, your story about the herb garden not yet planted strikes a chord with me! I have a box of plants (peonies, dahlias, begonias) that I got *last thursday* and haven't planted yet. I absolutely HAVE to get them in the ground tomorrow. how is yours going?

[Twilight]

We have sooooo much garden space and last year's efforts were dismal. I hope you get your garden sorted!

[Elastigirl]

14 hours ago, karinajean said:

oh, your story about the herb garden not yet planted strikes a chord with me! I have a box of plants (peonies, dahlias, begonias) that I got *last thursday* and haven't planted yet. I absolutely HAVE to get them in the ground tomorrow. how is yours going?

Not sure why, but I am so bad at this. I actually enjoy planting stuff, but it seems to take a gigantic act of will to get me started.

[elsfaire]

On 5/20/2016 at 8:04 AM, karinajean said:

oh, your story about the herb garden not yet planted strikes a chord with me! I have a box of plants (peonies, dahlias, begonias) that I got *last thursday* and haven't planted yet. I absolutely HAVE to get them in the ground tomorrow. how is yours going?

 

Well, *some* of the herbs are planted, though I can't say how good the dirt is. FWIW, I also have some plants that I obtained previously that are not yet planted. I think the oldest is 4 years... One spent those years living in a plastic garbage bag because it is a native plant I collected locally from a construction site.

 

On 5/20/2016 at 11:53 AM, Twilight said:

We have sooooo much garden space and last year's efforts were dismal. I hope you get your garden sorted!

 

Thanks! The front is looking pretty good (except the herb garden). The back has to be a project for another time, though.

 

23 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Not sure why, but I am so bad at this. I actually enjoy planting stuff, but it seems to take a gigantic act of will to get me started.

 

It can be an overwhelming project. I love planning and starting to plant, then partway through the process I lose steam, or life gets in the way again. Ah well...

Maybe you can start with just planting 1 thing?

[elsfaire]

(Most of) Week 2 Bulk Update

So it has been an on & off week. Some great things and some issues that meant I didn't move as much as I would like, but it is still an ok "start.

 

Monday -

Did a bit of light gardening, planting a few flowers, digging out some weeds in the herb garden patch, and planting some of the herbs. I would have done more, but I decided to go to game night after all (we moved it away from our house). I'm glad I did because we had a GREAT time.

 

Tuesday

Not much...

 

Wednesday

Woke up over 30 minutes earlier than usual to pack up food for the Hobbit while he went to an event. Decided to do a real bodyweight workout instead of going back to sleep. I say real BW workout, because I had really only done tiny ones since about August last year - a few pullups this day, a single set of pushups another day. This was a full 3 sets of each exercise. Yay!

I am happy that I did not lose quite as much arm strength as I had feared. I can kind of do a single pullup from standing on our doorway pullup bar. I had gotten to where I was doing 2-3 of each grip (chinup, neutral pullup, wide grip aided pullups) in rotation. I am also only able to do sets of 5 regular pushups right now before exhaustion. I had gotten to doing sets of 5 pushups with about and 18 inch decline. Squats are pretty bad now, but they were always inconsistent with me. So not as far back as I started NF originally, and more strength than I though I had maintained.

 

THEN, after the kids left for school I went to get the mail and had to clean up the garbage some animal got into. After that, I decided to take 30 minutes and plant a few more herbs before showering and getting ready for our office help to come. Did I mention that? We are trying to train up one of our staff to take over a bunch of the customer service responsibilities from me so I am not so backed up (I *literally* did not take a weekend off from the second week of January through late March) and so I can start working on my healthy pregnancy business. more. It can't happen fast enough for me.  

 

Thursday

Did some stretching and not much else. I know the workout from Wednesday was a good one, because DOMS. The day was very full, though. I spent a couple hours in the morning trying to fix the Windows 10 hijack that happened to the Hobbit's computer. He went into his office Wednesday and his computer screen said, "Welcome to Windows 10!" He did not approve or request the upgrade, and the only way out was to decline the Terms and Conditions. The computer said it was reinstalling Windows 7, but then would not reboot. I had left it alone on Wednesday because he was out of the office and I was busy, but I had to try to fix it Thursday. Tried everything I could find reference to and had the skill for (recovery discs, reboots, windows repair). No luck. Sent him to bring it to the local computer shop instead. We are VERY unhappy with Microsoft right now.

 

Friday

Not a thing, unless you count cleaning. I spent a few hours helping the Hobbit prep for our 2 big events happening that night (Game Show and "A Tasting Race"), and let him use my computer for much of the printing since his was still in the shop. Computer was ready in the late afternoon, so I picked it up. They had to transfer all of his files and do a clean install of Windows 7. They said they see this a lot from the forced Windows 10 upgrade.

 

Spent time after dinner scrubbing mildew out of the guest bathroom because my kids didn't turn the fan on enough and my mom and stepdad were coming Saturday to sleep in that room. So I got an arm workout. Didn't do much else, though, because I was trashed. Had woken up at 3:45 with my hand asleep, and no matter what position I tried, it kept falling asleep again within 30 seconds.

 

And today (Saturday)

Finished scrubbing the bathroom and did some other cleaning. Also stood up for about 2 hours at the afterparty fro my son's Film class "graduation" screening. Mom and Stepdad arrived in the morning, and went to the screening with us. I might go do a bit of yoga now for 5-10 minutes, but that would be about it.

 

So, not a great week (so far - I have 1 more day to fit a bit more in), but not horrible, either.

 

For a laugh:

Here is a funny song expressing my feelings about Microsoft this week:

 

 

 

 

[Lara]

I think your week was rather packed with movement, specially if you think of those last months. One workout, some stretching, cleaning workouts (those are tough!) and gardening. Maybe today you will still squeeze a short workout there?

Ah, windows, yes... I've heard about this windows 10 deciding things by itself... I used to have so many problems with windows and lose my nerves... Then I switched to linux distributions and lived happily ever after.

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

Oh, lots of movement there ... don't be too hard on yourself.  Do you have a step tracker???  

[karinajean]

Wow, you are SO BUSY. I mean, you probably feel like you're just getting through the day - but you get so much done!

Sent from my iPhone while riding a unicorn through the cosmos.