Status Update

I got to work with KJN Jon today. There is just something about that guy that drives me to drive myself. His positive energy and willingness to give are infectious. I always walk away wanting to train more, be more, and achieve more. Some people you just click with. There is also a level of trust. If he told me to do something as stupid as Tough Mudder, I would do it. In fact, I am. This Saturday, Tough Mudder Tahoe 2013 kicks off at 8am and 20 of us lemmings will be in line to jump off and into stuff, crawl through mud, climb over walls and generally beat the tar out of ourselves. Afterward, we will have that anchoring moment of personal achievement. We did it. Together. Last year, I did this event with the same people and through the encouragement of KJN Jon. Given my personal struggle, I was pleased to have completed the event without being carried. This year, I am more fit and more prepared, excited to do better. It seems insane that I would go back but like I said, KJN Jon has this inspirational way about him. I have tried to match this inspiration, and be the same spirit that KJN Jon brings to our school. He is unphased. He simply brings more enthusiasm, more excitement, and more great ideas to our group. This makes all of us better students.

Today, we worked on sticks. I think it's going well. I am working on speed and flow and trying to maintain over time. I remember they make us go for two minutes straight at the black belt test. I have to work up to maintaining form and speed over time. Practice, practice, practice. I'm training at least twice a day now, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. This week, I have laid off the fitness training. I'm trying to rest to prepare myself for Saturday. I am sleeping like a rock at night and it feels good to get lots of sleep. Temperatures get pretty hot during the day so most of my workouts have to be done early in the morning or in the late evening. After Tough Mudder, I will rest a day or two, then it will be back to full on fitness and curriculum.

Diet is going fairly well. I've managed to not eat too much sugar. I've been hitting the protein a little hard with organic chicken, eggs and fish and neglecting my vegetable intake. I eat a salad but I need something different than lettuce and tomatoes. I've been drinking spinach smoothies and laying off the cow's milk by eating plain goat milk yogurt with a little honey. It turns out to be lower sugar than the store bought flavored kind. Water intake is also down. I get at least two liters per day but in these temperatures, I need 3. The girls are so busy on top of our already busy schedule. I just need to prepare a little better. My weight is stable. No gain, no loss. I'm convinced that I am gaining muscle mass. After TM, I will have to start cutting weight by restricting calories. I'm a touch nervous about this given my cancer history. I want to keep my immunity strong and I am hoping that restricting calories won't affect that goal too much. I will ask my Oncologist in a couple of weeks.

So far so good. I feel that I know the curriculum well but certain fitness weaknesses affect my performance. For example, I'm working on quad strength to lower my stances for my forms and enhance my kicks. I'm working on flexibility to help with my kicks also. My hips are so tight from years of training, skiing, etc. I have limited mobility which affects my jumps, my kicks and my grappeling. I've been running for better stamina. The test is long and I will have to be working at peak performance for a full two days. After TM, I plan to switch to biking to get more stamina benefit and less overuse injury. The Life Skills thing is a bear. As hard as I try, I am struggling with memorizing so much. The logo paragraph is rough. I'm halfway there. All in all, I think things are going well. I'm managing my training and seeing results. However, September is not far away. My goal week to week is to make the most out of the time I have and not get into the trap of overtraining. That is a difficult tightrope to walk.

Busted

Today, I walked into the karate studio and KJN Gary looks at me with his most serious, "I'm-going-to-kick-your-ass" face and asks me, "I hear you're going to be missing my black belt training."
I looked at him like he had two heads. "Wha? No. I'm not missing anything." I am feeling like I just got busted by my dad for something big and I have no idea what that something is.
He asked, "you're not missing Thursday and Friday for something?" HA! It dawns on me that he's talking about Tough Mudder.... And he's messing with me. And it was working. Aaaargh.  I gotta get used to having a KJN in my face. Pretty hard to win a  stare down with  a 7th degree black belt. This is my biggest challenge. In class, he calls me out on my Life Skills memorization, points his finger at me like I'm totally busted and asks me to recite line 1 of the logo. Luckily, I know it but when he puts me under the gun, I choke. I HATE that. I need a strategy.
Class went well. We are studying sticks. Many of us have old habits that are difficult to break. We practice over and over and over. I make ONE mistake, and KJN is all over me. Really? I did five perfect disarms and the one I screw up is the one he hones in on. Moral of that story is don't make mistakes, ever, not in class anyway. As soon as you start to falter, he calls you out.  I feel like it's a game. He's doing his KJN best to find and push my buttons, and I'm doing my candidate best to not give him anything. I do a pretty good job sometimes but boy, when I screw up, he's ready to take advantage. So, it's more push ups, more pull ups, more stretching, more DVD watching and more practicing. I want it perfect. I will make it perfect.....as soon as I figure out what perfect looks like. LOL!
Feeling tired today. I've been putting in long hours. Yesterday, I did my 25 kicks with ankle weights (25 front kicks each leg, 25 side kicks each leg, 25 back kicks each leg & 25 roundhouse kicks each leg) along with my 200 wall kicks. I'm laying low today. Fish tacos for dinner tonight with a spinach smoothie. Sticking to my no sugar rule and "cheating" with a banana and peanut butter. My body wants sugar. I want chocolate. Expensive chocolate. The $7 chocolate Chuao Firecracker bar at Whole Foods.... I'm drinking water instead.

Brain Test

Big weekend. Tough Mudder training on Saturday. 3 sets of 7 pull-ups and 1 set of 8. 29 total. I am excited to see progress. Given that I am ten pounds heavy, I am excited to see this number go up as my weight goes down. Pull ups I can do. push-ups tweak my shoulder. I'm going to have to figure out how to get push up strong without push-ups. Gotta save this shoulder until game day. My Charlie horse is acting up. I'm icing, massaging, ice massaging, stretching etc, but I think my right leg is just hammered and Im going to have to baby that too. Saving it for Tough Mudder so Im laying off the front kicks and triangle leg chokes for awhile. They seem to aggravate it. Instead I'm all over the sit-ups and the pull ups. Still doing wall-kicks. This week, just enough for maintenance until Mudder. I can't believe it's less than a week away. I want to nail those walls and flash those monkey bars.
Training sticks this week. We didn't have much time today. Worked on Disarms 1-5 and double sinawali. Smacked Andee's hand twice. Feeling like a terrible partner.
Looking forward to a good week and grateful we aren't training physically demanding stuff this week. Eating lots of protein and drinking lots of water. It's hard to sit still.
Yesterday, I drove to the Bay Area to have an MRI. I have had some weirdo neuro episodes of tremor. One morning while Marek was gone, I got up to check on kids and about ten steps from bed, woke up on the floor with my legs shaking. Trip-py! Called the Onc and explained that I've also had a significant decrease in my vision. He scheduled the MRI. Now, we wait until a radiologist reads it. I guess I'm happy no one called today. Usually bad news travels fast. KB tomorrow morning. Tentative about going because I don't want to hurt myself this week. I'm pretty sure KJN Jon won't beat us up too badly.

Vacation is over

I am starting to get into this whole beach thing. Too bad we are on our way home. Yesterday, I did stairs sets. 8 sets of 60 stairs. At the top of each set, I did an upper body set. All total, I ended up with  2 sets 25 push-ups, 1 set of triangle push-ups, and 3 sets of bench crunches. Then, I went surfing. My arms are toast. I did catch a few waves which means I did about 10 pop-ups. I'm counting them as burpees! We had a fun day at the beach although it was entirely packed. I watched people drinking in the sun and thought, gack, how did I used to do that?
This morning, I ran on the beach for 30 minutes. I am feeling my legs today. The stair sets were a little killer. I'm feeling good though. I'm feeling strong. I managed to do 3 sets of 15 pull ups and I'm so excited because last year at Tough Mudder, I couldn't do one! What a difference a year makes! Nothing but fish tacos and blueberries since I've been here. Grandpa keeps buying the girls ice cream, but I have opted out. My bathing suit doesn't fit quite the way I'd like it to. Now that I am in menopause, my body is different. I can't take weight off quite as easily and I carry it differently. Still trying to figure out how to deal with this molasses-esque metabolism. 10 hours in a car on I-5 will not contribute to my fitness and weight loss goals. Ha ha! Tomorrow is TM training. That should be interesting....

Back to work

Back to training. This morning, I ran 40 minutes in the sand. I am still feeling my right quad a little bit. I'm trying to be careful not to reinjure it. More ice massage, rest and stretching in between workouts. We are staying with family who have a condo right on the beach, sort of. The condo is two blocks back on top of a bluff. There are 5 flights of stairs down to the beach, 60 stairs total. Tough Mudder is coming up in two weeks so I'm trying to make some last minute strength and conditioning gains. I did a couple of stair sets after my run but had nothing left. I did 3 sets of 15 pull-ups on the back side of the stairs, did my burpees, sit-ups, push-ups etc. Then spent the rest of the day surfing. I'm pretty sure surfing pop-ups count as burpees. I also got a few good trashings in the waves which I can count toward flexibility. It was fun pushing the girls into waves and playing in the water. We spend all day at the beach. Afterwards I rolled, stretched and then iced my right thigh. It seems like it's getting better as long as I don't do anything stupid. Fingers crossed.

All Clear I

Ortho appointment went GREAT today. Turns out, I was right. I have little to no left medial meniscus left in my knee thereby achieving  what most people don't achieve until they are in their 60's. I am proud to say that I am wearing my body out appropriately and should probably put my Orthopedist on retainer. He did say my hip looked good and so did the other one which was a distant concern. The knee is shot but he pumped me up with cortisone, so I'm hoping that will last about 3 months. At least now, I can push that flexibility and know that I'm not going to rip anything.
From there, I headed back south to Leucadia and chilled on the beach the rest of the afternoon. Having not slept for the past two days, I didn't think training hard would be prudent. I do not see strength gains when my mitochondria are wiped out. Ironically, a 46 year old body needs sleep and rest to perform well. A little caffeine and vitamin I go a long way but I'm saving those for game day. For now, sleep is good. Despite feeling a little lazy, I know my body will not perform given the last three days of driving and tending to others. A few fish tacos from the vendor down the street will get me ready to train tomorrow. I love fish tacos. I will eat them the entire time I am here. My right quad is still telling me it's not right. I brought my ice massager  and did that twice today. I also brought my roller and did that as well. No ankle weights until I get this quad back up and running. I hope it doesn't plague me. It's been a real trooper. After all, I shattered that femur and that very same muscle set contracted into a little tiny ball that took three Orthodpedic surgeons 4 hours to unwind. Given the constant contraction I demand from it, I have to say it's been pretty fair. Strengthening will only help but I gotta remember not to go to far too soon.

Friendship

On my road to black belt, I find that I can get fairly intensely focused on ME. My diet, my stretching routine, my kicking program, curriculum, watching the DVD, studying my Life Skills stuff.....There's enough to keep me focused on myself for hours. This morning I got in the car at 5am and headed for St John's Hospital in Santa Monica. My very best friend from High School, Maid of Honor, and adopted sister had her hip replaced. We Park City Ski Racer girls are hard on our joints.....Anyway, it was one of those things where you have to drop everything and let your BFF know that you are there. Of course, she did fabulous. In and out of surgery in two hours, walking by 4pm and insisting she doesn't need any pain medication. She's tolerating very well, and kinda reminds me of myself. We spent the day watching free movies, talking about boys, and drinking water. It has been a great day of filling my emotional tank. Since I've had this procedure and about 14 years of nursing experience, I turned out to be helpful. It feels good to give back and to be given an opportunity to make a difference. My friend was there the moment I was diagnosed with Cancer and stayed close throughout my ordeal. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to be there for her given the uncertainty of my own personal outcome just one year ago. I remain grateful. As I get closer to testing for my black belt, I would like gratitude to replace selfishness whenever possible. Tonight, I will spend the night in the hospital just to make sure she gets through the night okay. Tomorrow, I will see MY hip surgeon and get some info on how my hip is doing (and my left knee). With all the kicking we do and pushing my flexibility, I want to hear from him that I'm good to go for September. I'm pretty sure that I am, but it's nice to hear it from a professional.