The girl hit hard like a barracuda baby

Last night I tried an experiment. Since I only have one ace bandage I wrapped up my right ankle and not my left ankle, took some Tylenol PM and went to bed. This morning, surprisingly, my left ankle felt better than my right ankle. I have no clue. In the process of getting myself up and mobile and to the gym I determined that stairs were no longer trying to kill me, and therefore I would be fine on the treadmill. So I laced up my sneakers and hit it.

I ran for half an hour and felt ok. I even pushed myself to run a little faster. My ankles started aching a bit towards the end but I figured I was alright.

I did day two of week six of the Hundred push up challenge, or rather I tried to. My arms gave out at push up 38 out of 42 in the max set. Part of my problem I've realized is that my palms get sweaty while I'm doing my push ups and my hands start to slide outwards slowly, making for progressively difficult push ups. Anyone got any suggestions? But anyways that means I'm redoing week six next week.

I kinda ran out of time for my strength set unfortunately. All I did was a set of 20 sensei mark specials. I'm planning on doing some more sit ups and squats on my lunch break to make up for it.

Then it was time for Treadmill Round Two! Yeah, no. Running produced a decidedly unhealthy shooting pain from both ankles. So I walked. I put the incline up to 5 and kept my heart rate up above 150. It was a fast walk, but it was most definitely a walk. So I sucked at the workout today.

I really need to figure out this ankle problem though. It's slowin me down.

I had this big long introspective post about me being a tomboy that I was writing in my head while I was doing the first half of my workout, but I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say...I'll try to remember and post a bonus post later.

-Meg

Keeping Pace

Back to the gym today, for real.

I did a solid 20 minute run, with a five minute warm up and five minute cool down. I topped a mile. Somehow this is much more work, and feels like a much bigger accomplishment than the same distance on the elliptical machine..

I did day one of week five of the Hundred Push up Challenge. I had managed to do around 40 strait during my last test, so I was in the middle column this week. OMG WTF, it got so much harder this week! I barely did the 35 minimum for the last set. The last couple were BARELY eked out. I'm starting to worry that I'm going to end up having to repeat this week.

After that run, and the push ups, I did some light arm work and ab work (sensei mark specials, side crunches, and ab choppers) Stretched, and then about 20 minutes on the elliptical machine before realizing I was completely out of energy and hitting the shower.

I realized that I've never explained what a "sensei mark special" is. Well it's simple really, it's basically a modified set of crunches. First you start by laying down and holding your legs strait up, and crossing them at the ankles, so you're making an L out of your body with the long upper part being your legs, and the short lower part your torso. Now, you do a twisting crunch, touching your right elbow to your left knee, then another twist, left elbow to right knee, then two strait crunches. That's one. I usually alternate which elbow I'm using first so the second one would be left elbow to right knee, then right elbow to left knee, then two crunches.

Now do as many of those as you can. Lately I've been really weak and only been able to do about 20 before I have to stop and do the "omgi'minpain" face while trying to breathe without using my abs (which I've found is virtually impossible.)

I'm working my way back up to sets of 50 of those. Someday...
-Meg

Overtime week

No, not in a good way. Not in a fitness way.

This week I'm doing an extra shift at work. So I'll be doing a 50 hour work week this week. Because I'm not willing to give up any of my other after school activities (drawing group on Mondays, relaxing and stuff on weekends) that means that my workout time is seriously crunched. I did not go to the gym today. I did not do my pushups today.

I will go tomorrow and start week 5 of the Challenge tomorrow..

Again, I'm seeing my numbers decreasing, inexplicably (seeing how little exercise I've been getting and how horribly I've been eating) and yet I'm still feeling increasingly bloated. I wonder if I'm filling up with air...

More tomorrow.
-Meg