Waanie's battle log

[Waanie]

So... I haven't been on the forums for a while now, and a lot has changed in the mean time. I will get married at the end of August with my long term partner, and I will start a new job on July 1st ?. The job interviews took quite some time and energy, learning a new programming language along the way as well, but the salary increase is amazing and hopefully the culture will be less sexist as well.

 

Exercise-wise, I was slow to start after my illness, but I'm mostly back again. I've started running again, although I'm not following a program at the moment. I have 2 weeks to go before the race, but since it's only 2 miles I should be fine. Other exercise is going okay, although I have a tendency to want to go too heavy. I'm slowly but surely developing an aversion against anything with hanging and mostly with hanging upside down, mostly because I often end up dizzy again. Yesterday I hit my head on the edge of a box when going into an inverted hang, which does not improve things.

 

I have not been walking and cycling enough, even though we had some amazing weather. Today is the first day that I got in a walk again, even though it was only an hour in our neighbourhood instead of a hike. I want to be able to exercise more again, and not having to hesitate when doing things 3-4 days in a row, let alone actively holding myself back. Anyway, I will try to log my workouts and exercise over here and convince myself that I'm not really doing "nothing" .

[Alanna]

6 hours ago, Waanie said:

So... I haven't been on the forums for a while now, and a lot has changed in the mean time. I will get married at the end of August with my long term partner, and I will start a new job on July 1st ?. The job interviews took quite some time and energy, learning a new programming language along the way as well, but the salary increase is amazing and hopefully the culture will be less sexist as well.

 

 

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding and new job - that's really exciting!

[Rookie]

You are doing great Waanie! Congrats on the job and wedding. Are you excited?

[Waanie]

12 hours ago, Alanna said:

 

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding and new job - that's really exciting!

Thanks .

 

4 hours ago, Rookie said:

You are doing great Waanie! Congrats on the job and wedding. Are you excited?

Thanks! I'm both excited and a little bit nervous, but I'm sure it'll all be alright.

[Waanie]

Yesterday was an active day with lots of walking and a nice strength training. I'm currently at 3x2 + 1.5x1 chin-ups, which is nice . I feel like my deadlifts have not really improved over the last half year, but oh well. I mostly exercise for mental health, and the group classes are really nice for that!

[Jupiter]

Congrats on the wedding and the job! I'm so happy for you!??

[TimovieMan]

Congrats on the job and the wedding!!! ?

 

[Waanie]

9 hours ago, Jupiter said:

Congrats on the wedding and the job! I'm so happy for you!??

1 hour ago, TimovieMan said:

Congrats on the job and the wedding!!! ?

 

Thanks guys!

 

 

Yesterday I decided to start running away from zombies again, after I'd heard a podcast about gamification of exercise. It was fun, the 15s intervals felt like nothing at all and I ran the full 10 minutes of free-form run without too much effort. I lazily stretched and foam rolled afterwards as well, which is something I should do more often. I noticed that I really enjoy the current weather (15 degrees and sunny) and that there are flowers blooming everywhere .

 

Today is not my day... I'm tired and cranky and I just don't wanna anymore. It started with the group strength workout being more pulling than I'm comfortable with, and I feel lucky that I don't feel dizzy (with this workout it's about 50/50). I picked a deliberately low weight for my deadlifts, 5x8@60kg, since I also did deadlifts on Wednesday evening. Then when I got home, we played a game of Frosthaven and lost spectacularly, without even seeing how we could win this scenario in a 2-player game. Then I was annoyed at my partner since this was the third time in a row where he said he'd make dinner-plans and he hadn't done it and couldn't do it in a reasonable amount of time. BLARGH. On top of all that, my stomach and back are hurting and I'm eating everything in sight... I guess shark-week is starting.

[KB Girl]

You're really not doing nothing! You're doing pretty amazing

 

Sorry pre-shark week is being a pain. And I must have forgotten to tell Jaap about the program, so I'm sorry for double deadlifts too ? I hope today was better and that you got to enjoy some more outside time! 

[Waanie]

9 hours ago, KB Girl said:

You're really not doing nothing! You're doing pretty amazing

 

Sorry pre-shark week is being a pain. And I must have forgotten to tell Jaap about the program, so I'm sorry for double deadlifts too ? I hope today was better and that you got to enjoy some more outside time! 

Thanks! It's just that sometimes it feels like everything is falling behind? We have tons of laundry still to do, our garden needs to be weeded and chopped, the house is a mess, etc. It makes sense, since interviewing for jobs is such an intense process, but I still don't like it. Yesterday morning I was outside all morning, and that really helped my mood .

 

Yesterday the weather was perfect for a bike ride + hike, so I was gone basically all morning for that. There is this beautiful park at 20 minutes biking from my home, and because it was morning it was not too busy yet. It also helped that the podcasts I listened to were actually interesting, which is always a bit of "hit or miss" when trying out new ones. I might be a bit of a nerd, since I enjoyed the one about code quality the most . We played some Frosthaven in the afternoon with the difficulty dialed back enough that we won the scenario, and it gave us lots of rewards. I'm still sharky and have to take care not to lash out, but oh well. I skipped my run yesterday since my calves told me I hadn't biked + hiked for such a distance in a while, so I wanted to give them some rest and will go to KB group class instead in an hour or so .

[Waanie]

KB group class was fun! I managed to complete the entire training without having to take extra rest breaks, and I can feel my technique improving training-by-training. While I'm still using only 8kg bells, it's starting to feel more natural and tiring but not exhausting. I expect I'll be a little sore tomorrow, but nothing too bad .

 

On the other hand, I think I did too much strength training in too short a period this week; during the warming up this morning I noticed that my neck-mobility is getting worse again, and I expect I'd get dizzy from any hanging at the moment. I will need to give my back/neck some time to calm down again, so I'll skip body control class on Tuesday and just do some strength training on Wednesday and Saturday. This way I can also incorporate some more running, since June 1st is getting scarily close and I only ran once this week.

 

Speaking of weekly planning, am I the only one who makes quite intricate weekly plannings, so that I know when I can be spontaneous and when I have to preserve energy? I always feel like I have to constantly monitor my energy-levels, both in any moment as cumulated over a day/week/month. So I try to check on Sunday what my week is going to look like, what special activities there are, when to get groceries, etc. I have the idea that very few people do this, and I feel a bit self-conscious about it, but on the other hand I know it's likely I'll either go over my limits or miss out on activities I could've done if I plan this way. It's still hard to say no to certain activities, but at least now I know whether or not I have the budget for it. Is my life too full? Or is this fine if it works for me?

[TimovieMan]

On 5/21/2023 at 1:56 PM, Waanie said:

Is my life too full? Or is this fine if it works for me?

Does it work for you?

 

If yes, keep it up. ?

 

[Waanie]

On 5/23/2023 at 2:39 PM, TimovieMan said:

Does it work for you?

 

If yes, keep it up. ?

 

Fair enough! It works very well for me, since I can now gauge quite accurately how much mental energy I will be expending in a week, and cancel things early on if it's turning out to be too much . The FOMO is still strong, but at least I'm managing my energy levels effectively.

 

This week was busy but satisfying: I gave notice of leaving at my current job, got two strength workouts in and went for an amazing hike today. All my colleagues understood my decision to leave the company, although they are sad to see me go. I'm actually also a little bit sad to leave my colleagues, since they are amazing, but the pay gap and corresponding esteem is just too big (with otherwise more or less the same benefits).

 

My neck seems to be holding well this week, which means that the volume of hanging was not too high. The main lift this week was squat (on both workouts), and I did 5x3x60kg for the first time . I'm almost at bodyweight for my sets of 3, which feels amazing. However, after a solid 4 hours of exercise (strength training + 15km hike), my legs are now complaining, so I will take some rest now .

[Waanie]

I'm taking it a little slow these days, since tomorrow I'll go running two miles. The logistics are a bit complicated, since the company is offering dinner but not transport, but I think we've figured it out . I'm somehow still mentally exhausted, also because I have to tell many people that I'm leaving the company. I tell most people that I'm leaving for the money, which is a fine enough reason. I've started saying my goodbyes to people I'd worked with in the past, and all in all it's a lot of social stuff.

 

Today is a bit busy again with clarinet lesson and picking up our wedding rings this afternoon . There's also plenty of chores to be done, but I think I made a good start at that. My new bujo came in, and now I kinda want to make it into something more structured than my current one, but I suspect I won't hold to the structure for more than a few weeks... Life's hard! I guess that my mental tiredness is making this kind of decisions harder than they should be, but oh well.

[Waanie]

Our wedding rings are in, so we started wearing them . It's strange to wear a ring, but somehow I feel even more adult now. I still like the design, and hope that I'll still like it for decades to come .

[TimovieMan]

17 hours ago, Waanie said:

It's strange to wear a ring

You'll get used to that in no time at all. ?

[Waanie]

9 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

You'll get used to that in no time at all. ?

Great .

 

Today I ran the race of two miles, and it went amazingly well . I don't know my official time yet, but it's faster than the 19 minutes I aimed at. It was a lot of fun, and now I'm considering if I want to join more races in the future... who knows. I even had no trouble biking home afterwards, so I have the hope that I did not get any injury .

[Waanie]

No injury, and just a little bit of soreness . Surprisingly, most of the soreness is in my abs and back; I might have braced a bit more than I expected during my run . Official time between start and finish is 17:57 (10.75 km/h), which is amazingly fast for how much I've trained. I was very nervous on beforehand, so I'm glad that everything turned out so well.

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

On 6/2/2023 at 1:37 PM, Waanie said:

Official time between start and finish is 17:57 (10.75 km/h),

 

Congrats!!!

[Waanie]

On 6/5/2023 at 2:31 AM, Chris-Tien Jinn said:

Congrats!!!

Thanks! I'm still really happy that I did the run .

 

Saturday I took another restday since I was still very sore.

Sunday I did first a kettle bell class and decided that the strength training class would also be fun. It was a little bit too much, mostly for my central nervous system, but it was a lot of fun and I don't regret it. I feel like I'm getting the hang of KB movements, even though I know that my technique has a lot of room for improvement. It's now good enough to just participate in the training, and I feel like I'm making progress. My grip strength for deadlifts afterwards was not great, as expected, but that's fine. It's good to know that 7x3x80kg is not a problem for the rest of my body at all .

Monday I went to work during the day and orchestra during the evening, so there was no time for exercise. Still, quite some biking was done.

Tuesday I got the first week of my new programme from my trainer, and I like it so far. It's a combination of strength training with some KB work in, so that I can prepare for the KB longcycle competition and also generally just get stronger. Everything felt relatively light, except for the negative pull ups and rolling pistol negatives. I liked it.

 

Today my mood is going up and down like crazy, which makes me realise that I'm not quite yet in the mental space where I want to be. Tipping my cup of tea so that it fell on my keyboard really broke my mood, but fortunately all keys still work. The keycaps are of poor quality, so I actually had to repair some of them by glueing a tiny plastic thingy to the keycap. I managed, all seems well, but I'm now still in a shitty mood. It will probably pass some time around clarinet lesson, so that's probably alright. I will take it slow today, and hopefully be full of energy again tomorrow.

[Chris-Tien Jinn]

2 hours ago, Waanie said:

but I'm now still in a shitty mood.

 

Do you have any little mood vitamins that you can use to break a bad mood?  Music, a little walk, etc??

[Waanie]

13 minutes ago, Chris-Tien Jinn said:

Do you have any little mood vitamins that you can use to break a bad mood?  Music, a little walk, etc??

Today it was solved because I had clarinet lesson only a few hours later and that improved my mood a lot, otherwise I might have looked into things like that, yeah. In general, it works best for me to just do something escapist (reading, watching youtube, etc). I acknowledge that I feel bad, but decide to not put too much effort in determining why; especially with me changing job, there's a large chance that my mood swings will solve themselves and they're not so bad that I really need to do something about it.

[Waanie]

I decided to go challenging again! Otherwise, I'm fine, just quite busy. Today is the first day that I can relax, so I will take it slow and take off again tomorrow.