Facing Workout Phobias

After a quick self diagnostic this afternoon, I have decided that I should be able to try swimming tomorrow. I hemmed and hawed about it, tried to convince myself that I really should give myself another couple days of rest, bartered with myself (I'll go to boxing on Sunday instead!) and ultimately decided that I need to face this.

So tomorrow I will face the fear and don a swimsuit in a public place. Once I'm in the water I will be fine, it's that walk of shame from wherever you leave the towel to when you hit the water that bothers me. Never mind that I picked the gym I signed up for (NYSC btw) because it had locations with pools. Never mind how much I love swimming (I had a brief career in competitive swimming cut short by my inability to focus on anything enough to actually train for it in elementary school) or how much I just enjoy being in the water (I also used to teach swimming). I haven't been able to get past that walk yet. I swim like a fish in my parents pool (which is located in their back yard, nicely screened from the outside world by a fence ) but ask me to put a swimsuit on in any kind of public location (beach, party, you name it) and that clenchy panicky feeling grabs me just below my solar plexus and I use every neuron in my creatively trained brain to come up with a reason, any reason that I just can't, so sorry maybe next time.

The last time I swam for fitness was back in 2000, when I was living in California, and had a pass to a 24hour gym with a huge pool and hot tub. I was overweight then, around 160, but I had been making strides towards loosing weight. I had purchased a very unfortunate silver tank suit, which I thought was The awesomest thing evah, and was all about getting my swim back. Until I realized that As I stood there on the deck, people could see me, and I came to the sudden realization that I looked like a shiny tube of paint. Totally cylindrical. So not hot. I panicked and plunked myself down in the water as fast as possible. I didn't go back.

The major contributing factor, this time, in my decision to face the pool again, is injury. I can barely walk right now, let alone get a decent workout on a treadmill or elliptical machine. I must find an alternative. The state of my body today is the direct result of a previous injury. Back in 2004 I was in decent shape, nay I was the hotness. I spent four or five days a week at the dojo. I kicked many butts. A knee injury ended all of that. Waking up one morning unable to walk, let alone kick, jump, roll, and knee people in the stomach, I totally freaked out. For a while I kept up doing modified exercises. I did all my upper body basics sitting in a chair with hand weights. I did massive numbers of sit ups and crunches and other exercises. But I slowly petered off, as I gave up hope that this was a passing injury. It ended up requiring surgery and totally incapacitated me. It's still not 100%, and I've learned to be nice to my knees, but it took me this long to get over the injury, and my subsequent failure at fitness.

I will not let this injury do the same thing to me. I will face my public swim suit wearing phobia down in the name of my quest to regain my fitness and eventually return to the dojo floor.

But I'm going to bring the biggest towel I own and I will be wearing it up to the very last second I can. One step at a time here.
-Meg

Back in the Big City

The vacation is over, and I'm back to the daily routine.

Exercise wise, the vacation did not go as planned. Family obligations took over my good intentions and Kayaks were not available for rent as we had hoped. We did do a lot of walking, and ran twice.

The first day we ran, I felt my body as heavier than ever before. We ran for a good long while before I needed my first walk break. I had forgotten my watch so I'm not sur exactly how long. We walked and ran (more walking than running) for the rest of the 3.6 miles, out and back through the woods, a long the paved road across the island.

I felt the run the next day. I didn't expect the ache across my ribs. We didn't do much moving at all that day. The day after that was spent doing a lot of running around and getting stuff done.

The second day we ran, I did much better at first. We ran for a full ten minutes, and got way farther than the first time. We later measured it out on the trip odomoter in the car, and we had ran for a full mile. We ran/walked the rest of the loop, and then on the way back, I had the inspired Idea to sprint across one of the bridges. About halfway across the bridge I felt this sharp pain on the inside of my hip. Every step shot pain from the inside of my hip to the outside of my hip, and down the inside of my leg. We walked the rest of the way back, and by the time we got home I was limping to favor my hip.

Two days and a lot of Advil later the pain was gone, and I'm still not sure what I did, but it resulted in me not getting a whole lot more exercise over the rest of the trip.

I finished off week three of the Hundred push up Challenge, but completely dropped the ball on even starting week four. So, I'm going to start week four tonight, when we hit the gym.

I'm convinced running is a better workout than the elliptical machine now, and I'm also equally convinced that I am not in good enough shape to be a runner yet. I'm going to start easing running into my routine, hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be able to do some running in Central Park before it gets cold.

I weighed myself this morning to see how I had done, since I had completely stopped watching what I ate while in Maine, and found that I hadn't done horribly. Not great, but no the disaster I was expecting.

Weight: 160 (up from 158.7)
Body Fat %: 32.9 (up from 32.6)

Now that I'm back in the City, I'm getting back to the routine. We'll see if the Holiday Weight Gain goes away ^_^

-Meg