When garage doors attack: a stall in my training?

Today started with a very dramatic accident. (at least I thought so....)

Previous to getting married to a man who is very concerned about being on time, I used to be late to everything. I will say that that has changed over the past two years, but I still have some bad habits that stick. One of those habits is hitting snooze on the alarm. I will snooze until I only have 10 minutes to get out of the house and of course I end up arriving 5-10 min late to work. Not good.

So today I woke up determined to be on time. I am proud to say I made it out the door at a reasonable time. However, as fate would have it, I ended up being delayed by an epic battle with my garage door that set me back 10 minutes, and possibly set back some of my Spartan training as well.....

As I went to pull out of the garage, the gate just would not open! 

Let me set the scene for you:

This is how our garage door opens. It slides horizontally. There has been 1 time in the past when the gate wouldn't open, so Shawn took the lever and inserted it into our garage controller box and cranked it open.

So, when I couldn't get out this morning I immediately got out of the car, inserted the lever, and began to manually crank the door open. I had been at it for about a minute, when suddenly, the gate started opening on it's own! This meant the lever I had inserted started rotating SUPER FAST. It bent my wrist, then the other side slapped down on the back of my hand, then it loosed itself and went flying into the air.

Immediately I hurt. I swore I had broken my thumb where the lever hurt.

I took a picture immediately afterward of my hand. It's not gross, but I know some people are squeemish, so instead of posting it here i've added a link to the photo, so you can choose whether or not you wish to see it.

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k92/dramadye/hurthand.jpg

As the day has progressed i'm happy to say I don't believe anything is broken. In fact, it hasn't been the part of my hand that was hit that has been bothering me most. The muscles in my wrist and forearm feel extremely tense and I'm concerned I may have strained them.

Yes, I am concerned this could affect my ability to climb things during the race. I'm gonna take it easy on my wrist the next few days to see how it goes. Ultimately this isn't that big of a setback, just a reminder that no matter how strong you are you're body is still vulnerable!

Next time, I'll think first and turn the power off before I start a manual crank.... Oh if only I could strengthen my common sense!

24 days till the race!!

Twenty five

And the countdown begins!!

Only 25 more days until the race!!

The weekend is over and that means it is back to work… Working out that is!

Usually on Saturdays Shawn and I go to the park and play about 3 hours of ultimate frisbee, but this Saturday was different. We had a friends wedding to go to and it started at such a time that we weren't able to play. We didn't mind! The wedding was SO MUCH FUN!

Unfortunately I have a terrible camera, and the few photos I did take didn't turn out so hot. Nonetheless, here's a pic of me and my best friend Stevie:

And this picture of me and my handsome hubby!

The wedding was great, and both Shawn and I burned a lot of calories dancing! We danced for a looooooong time to some great music! It was a BLAST!!

But that was then, and this is now….

Monday nights I take a FIT class that my husband teaches. Last night I got a great workout in!

Tonight I will be running hopefully 2 miles when I get home. It's my goal to run 3 miles on thursday. That will be the first time I've ever done it!! Eeep!

Fortunately I have eaten very well today, so I feel my body is up for a challenge!

Enough typing, time to sweat!

ONE MONTH TO GO!!

The Spartan Race is ONE MONTH away from today!

WOW! 

In four weeks I will be crawling through mud, jumping over walls, swimming, wrestling Spartan warriors, and in general, doing the toughest physical thing I have ever done in my life.

Do I feel ready? 

Its hard to say.  I have a feeling that even after the race I still won't feel ready for it. However, I am so much stronger! If I was forced to run today, I think I could do it, and I could run it well.  Still, there are several obstacles I need to push through.  I still have never run 3 consecutive miles in my training, let alone tried running them uphill (as most of the race is uphill).  But I truly believe I will be ready on the actual race day!

Each week it's easy to see how much I'm progressing in the things I can actually do.  I work out a lot with my husband (he is an amazing trainer!) and when I first started training there was one workout that I could only get halfway through in one hour. Now, I can do that same workout in about 25 minutes!

Every Wednesday I do a special hill training workout at my office. (we have a fairly steep driveway). This is the workout:

1. Run to the bottom of our driveway
2. Run back up the steep driveway
3. 15 pushups
4. 20 lunges left leg
5. 20 lunges right leg
6. 5 burpees (OH! I have such a love hate relationship with Burpees!)
7. 30 squats

The first week I did this workout it took me 60 minutes to do this 5 times.  Just two weeks later, I could do the whole thing 8 times through in 60 minutes! AMAZING!!!!

As if that progress wasn't enough, I've decided to post some progress pictures. My weight has pretty much maintained at about the same level, but I now have muscles!

AS a reminder, this was me in March 2011before I had started any training:

And, now, here I am today:

Yes. I do have a huge grin on my face. I have it because for the first time ever in my life, I feel really content with my body. 

Now, please, do not mishear me! This has been a process. Why do I feel really content with my body? It's because every single day I am working hard to actively love  my  body.  Each day I make a choice as to whether or not I'm going to actually take care of myself by eating right and working out. I definitely fail at that a lot.  However, there is grace in the process. 

With one month to go I am increasing my training! Also, I'll be cutting alcohol and sugar out of my diet for this month... Please! Don't tempt me! :-)  I want to make sure that I feel I have prepared myself to the best of my abilities for this race.

Alrighty! Enough typing! Time to go for a run!

So... It's been a while

You may have noticed I haven't posted in a while. No good excuses for that really. However, I do have a personal message to you!

Thanks for your support! Can't wait to see how the last two months fly by!

The death of a legacy

Well. I'm sad to say I have finally had enough.

That's right.

I'm killing the salad I eat every day for lunch.

I've never enjoyed a salad so much. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I ate it every day for lunch for nearly 3 months. Maybe you remember it from a previous blog post?

However, today my taste buds couldn't take it anymore and I had to come to the conclusion that I need a change in my daily salad-ing.

I need your  help to bring to life a new salad! What do you suggest?

3- HALFWAY!!!

I cannot believe I am officially halfway to the Spartan Race!

Thank you for your support and encouragement in this process. August has been a tough month and I really need more accountability as I move on from here. Since I am now 3 months away from the race I am beefing up my training. I'll try and blog about that soon.

Wonder what the Spartan Race will be like? Wonder no more! I have created a video that perfectly breaks down everything I will be going through at the race!

Oh I would walk five hundred miles... or maybe just 3 and a half..

Hey! So this is cool!

Yesterday we had a health fair at my company and lots of vendors were giving away neat stuff. In one of my goodie bags I got a pedometer!

Today I tracked how many steps I take. In my work day alone I walked 3 and a half miles!

My work day was particularly busy, but how cool is that! No idle desk sitting for me! I'm a girl on the go!


As far as the kidney infection front is going I'm feeling better. I'm still not 100% though. I worked out for the first time in a week today and I couldn't do much more than 20 minutes without hurting internally. I'm just going to have to ease myself back in.


TOMORROW! There will be a more in depth blog! I just wanted to share this neat-o fact with ya'll!