Showing posts with label P90X. Show all posts

When the mind games fail, it's time to quit.

Today's workout:
Sculpt 30 & Ab Ripper X
276 calories/47:18

Today's workout may also be known as:

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about exercising when you don't feel like exercising is to commit to doing it for 10 minutes.  If after 10 minutes, you still don't feel like it, you can quit, and then you've at least done something.  I have used this little mental trick many times, and every single time, after ten minutes, I feel great and finish my workout.

If I had used this trick today, I would have done ten minutes and then eaten an entire pizza.

Do you ever have days where working out just feels terrible? 

Today was one of those days for me.  Cinderella opens in just over two weeks now, so I really wanted to push it this week, especially since last week got a little off because of the dumb cold I caught.  So last night as I was planning my day, I was all set to do my HIIT workout and my Sculpt workout and really go all out.  Then I woke up this morning.  I don't even know what it was, really - I didn't feel sick, I'd gotten plenty of sleep, I had a healthy breakfast.  But I knew right away that the HIIT workout wasn't even on the table, because just the thought of jumping up and down like that gave me a headache.  I got through the Sculpt workout, but I had to take several breaks and skip reps because my muscles got tired and achy so quickly.  I thought Ab Ripper X was going to make me pass out. 

I'm proud of getting through what I got through, and I know in the long run, skipping the HIIT workout was the right thing to do and is not a big deal.  But I think once you're used to being able to get through tough workouts, not being able to get through them really does a number on you.  That being said... in the spirit of remaining positive, I am choosing to see today's workout as successful simply because I did it.  It may not have been the best I've ever done, but it was the best I had for the day, and I did it!

What do you do to overcome a bad workout?
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Weekly Recap!

I absolutely love Amylee's "Weekly RUNdown" that she posts on Mondays, so as usual, instead of thinking up my own clever ideas, I'm going to steal someone else's.  This might not happen every Monday, but since I was particularly lazy about actually writing about my workouts this week, I thought it might be nice to attempt to remember them!  Here goes...

Weekly Recap: December 12th - December 18th

Monday:  A much needed rest day after getting my 5K PR on Sunday!!

Tuesday:  My first fartlek run!  I ended up running for 35 minutes, or a total of 45 minutes if you include a 5 minute warm up walk and a 5 minute cool down walk, and I went 3.62 miles.  My average pace was 12:26, but since it was a fartlek, my pace was really all over the place.  I did feel a little bit like I favored sprinting, and wasn't including slightly longer bursts at a slightly slower than sprinting pace, so that is something I will work on!


Wednesday:  The beginning of Cinderella Boot Camp - yeehaw!  I did HIIT 20 and Ab Ripper X.  Both are really tough workouts, but if I'm going to be back in my skinny jeans (which, by the way, are a gorgeous pair of Joe's jeans that I found in a thrift store) by the time Cinderella opens, I need to get tough.  Especially because I did the math incorrectly (read: was a space cadet and got my days mixed up) and we actually open a week before I thought we did.  So my grand plan of 6 pounds in 6 weeks needs to be accelerated to 6 pounds in 5 weeks.  Possible?  I think so!


Thursday:  Thursdays are tempo days, and the plan was a 5 mile tempo run.  I finished 5.65 miles at an average pace of 12:08 (including walking to warm up and cool down).  It went well, though I struggled to maintain a good pace.  For training purposes, I'm trying to maintain a 10:15 pace for my running intervals during the tempo runs, but it was not happening in this run... I was either running at a 9:45 pace or a 10:30 pace.  I am glad this is not rocket science.


Friday:  Unplanned rest day because the day got away from me!  Too busy shopping for a ball gown for Cinderella to be bothered to exercise.  Sigh.  My life is super hard.


Saturday:  HIIT 25 and random ab work... meaning several of the moves from Ab Ripper X, but only 10 or so reps of each move instead of the 25 reps that Tony demands.  My abs were still slightly sore from Wednesday, so I thought taking it down a notch would be okay.  It was my first time trying HIIT 25, and I have to say, I didn't love it.  I'll give it another chance when I'm more prepared for it (I was stressed on Saturday, and not really feeling the whole exercise thing), but the combos were more complicated, and you're working hard enough that complicated is just frustrating.  I might have to work up to this one by doing HIIT 15 and HIIT 20 some more.


Sunday:  The long run for this week (which is week three of the FIRST training plan) was 10 miles.  I ended up cutting it a little short and doing 9.51 miles at an average pace of 12:29 (with warm up and cool down).  I wanted to complete all ten miles, but I got out the door a little later than planned and the sun went down while I was out running.  When I started the run, it was about 55 degrees and sunny outside, so I wore capris, a tech t-shirt, and sunglasses.  Like a moron.  Needless to say, when the sun went down, so did the temperature, and I was a struggling unit.  By the time I hit 9 miles, it was getting very cold and very dark, so I decided one mile would not make or break me and went home.  Overall, I was extremely happy with the way the run went - since the half marathon in October, the longest run I had done was 6 miles.  There were some tough parts of this run (miles 5 and 6 were mostly uphill and right when the temperature started to drop) but as a whole, it went incredibly well.  It did make me very tired though - I slept 10 hours last night!  Maybe for each mile I run, I need an hour of sleep...
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Cinderella Boot Camp Day One

Today's workout:
HIIT 20 and Ab Ripper X
311 calories/38:00

Today I began what I am calling "Cinderella Boot Camp."  Cinderella opens in just over 6 weeks, and I want to look absolutely fabulous.  Prince Charming has been directed to stare longingly at me in amazement the minute he sees me, but I want everybody in that audience to drop their jaws and do the same thing.  Luckily, I have six weeks.  And, coincidentally, I am now 6 pounds away from the weight I was at when I finished P90X.  So if I can lose a pound a week for the next six weeks (which is totally doable if I avoid French fries at all costs), I can be back at my lowest adult weight for Cinderella.  Which would be GLORIOUS.  Thus... "Cinderella Boot Camp."  While the running three times a week thing will get me ready for the half marathon in February, it won't get me back into my skinny jeans... which I haven't actually worn in over a year.  I miss those jeans and I want to wear them when we go out after opening night.  

My plan for the next six weeks is essentially to combine three different programs: my current half marathon plan, Turbo Fire, and P90X.  Obviously I can't do everything, and since I do want to be ready for that half marathon, the running is my top priority.  But part of the FIRST training plan is an emphasis on cross-training.  Personally, I'm not a swimmer or a cyclist - I can do both, but I'm not going to do it regularly, and even if it's the best cross-training for runners, if I don't do it, it doesn't help me.  So on the days I'm not running (right now I'm shooting for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), I'll be doing a mixture of Turbo Fire and P90X.  I'm going to lean heavily on the HIIT workouts from TF, mostly because I think I've got my long cardio workouts covered with my running - better I get in some high intensity stuff and add some variety.  I'm hoping to do all three HIITs each week, using HIIT 15 and HIIT 20 as a warmup (HA!) for strength training, and HIIT 25 as more of a stand alone workout.  As for P90X, I'll be adding it in as I feel like it.  Today I chose to do Ab Ripper X because I've been completely neglecting my abs.  On Friday, I'm planning on doing Core Synergistics... more abs, but also some "functional fitness" style stuff, which I realize I haven't done in a while.

... bored yet?  I know.  But you're saving my parents and David from having to hear all of this, so I'm sure they would thank you personally right now if you actually read that and cared.

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Tony Horton doesn't want me to blog.

Today's workout:
20 minutes on the elliptical/kinda sorta Chest and Back
438 calories/59:40

I did Chest and Back today and now it hurts to type.  And I didn't even do the actual DVD... I kind of made it up as I went along because David is visiting (YAY!) and I decided curling my hair this morning was more important than working out when I had access to a DVD player and a TV.  So... makeshift Chest and Back.  And it still destroyed me.


And I beg to differ with Mr. Horton (despite the fact that I gave him the damn caption) - David assures me that I am looking good.  Apparently exercising and watching what I eat really does work.  Damnit.

So since it hurts to type, I'll keep this short... ya'll should head over to Facebook and check out the pictures for the Rock 'n Roll Denver Marathon and 1/2 Marathon page.  I'm in their album for the 2011 event!  Looking just about as spastic and excited as usual.


Not going to lie... damn proud to be on that Facebook page.  Looking forward to my next Rock 'n Roll already!
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Triple Tangent Twednesday: The "it was really hard" edition.

I found all of my P90X workouts again... they had fallen behind the television.  I have no idea why I didn't automatically think to look there.  I decided to put the strength workouts back into my rotation because I really haven't done regular strength training since I finished doing P90X the first time... which was last summer... which is unacceptable.  So I decided to start doing them again this week.  I also decided to start this half marathon training plan this week as well, in preparation for the Ralston Creek Half that I am still considering (really, it depends on how lethal the weather decides to be in February).

I thought the FIRST plan would be a nice second training plan for me because it still only requires three runs a week (which is really all I can handle without whining), but with the speedwork and longer tempo runs, I thought it would give me a nice challenge and hopefully improve my time!  So, with that in mind... 

1.  I did P90X Chest & Back on Monday.  It was really hard.

2.  I did my first official speedwork training on Tuesday.  It was really hard.

3.  I sat around and cried today because I was so sore and exhausted and destroyed by life.  It was still hard.

I wish I was joking about that third one.  I don't want to be the Debbie Downer blog, and I try not to get too personal around here... aside from talking about smashed boobs in sports bras because SOMEBODY HAS TO TALK ABOUT IT, PEOPLE!

Sorry, David.  The world has to know.

But I have to admit that part of the reason I haven't been blogging lately or responding to anyone's comments (I read them, I swear, I don't think I'm that cool) or commenting on anyone else's blogs is because it has been a hell of a week.  I really did sit on my couch and cry tonight - I'm deciding to blame hormones and Tangled because really, how do you watch the lantern scene and not cry?  But it was also because I've been having some personal nonsense going on.  I love a hard workout as much as the next masochist, but the speedwork on Tuesday stomped all over my pride and handed it to me on a silver platter.  Speedwork sucks.  And Bonnie was spayed yesterday (she's super thrilled with all of us right now), so after a brutal and demoralizing run, I got to pick up a 45 pound squirming and unhappy dog several times and get her in and out of the car.  Let me tell you what a blast that was when my entire upper body already hated me from P90X on Monday!  I woke up this morning and my left arm was throbbing and my elbow refused to straighten.  So I took today off.  Which I know is listening to my body and taking care of myself, but it unfortunately translated into "take the day off of exercise... and also, eat your feelings."  It didn't help that I hung out with a friend today, and it turned into helping her pick out a birthday card and present(s) for another friend of hers.  Apparently she didn't realize that since she didn't get me a birthday card or present, this would hurt my feelings.  Not sure how that oversight was made, but I didn't say anything because, really, what do you say?  "I'm sorry, I can't shop with you for someone else's birthday because I'm still waiting for my birthday present.  Love and kisses."  

I pretty much dissolved after that and ate half of the contents of my fridge, bawled my eyes out, watched Tangled and You've Got Mail, bawled some more, called David and cried to him that I don't have friends and never will have friends... and now here I am, telling the internet how sad and lonely I feel tonight and how good I am at eating those feelings instead of doing anything about it.


But that's that.  Today is over and tomorrow is not only a new day, but a new month, and I intend to get December off on the right foot.  Probably by wearing the fabulous new Lululemon jacket that I completely splurged on today.  WIN.

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The 480 Workout that ended up being the 400...

Today's workout:
323 calories/35:00
+
Ab Ripper X
125 calories/17:35

I've been doing a lot of cleaning lately.  I hate cleaning.  I suck at it and it makes me super grumpy.  When I post things like this...


... I'm really not kidding.  I have way too much stuff.  I had way too much stuff back in high school, and then I left half of that stuff at home before I went to college, and probably tripled my amount of stuff through college.  And let's not even talk about the two semesters spent in Florida and my constant desire to blow my paychecks at the Orlando outlet malls.  Let's just say I have a whole lot of stuff.  And one of my goals for 2011 was to get rid of most of it.  Welp.  Here we are, halfway through November, and I've barely made a dent in the decluttering that needs to be done.  Thus... lots of cleaning lately.

I woke up this morning and cleaning sounded really gross just like it does every other day, so I decided to browse blogs instead for some new workout ideas.  I kept going back and forth about what I was going to do for workouts for a while... I stick with my routine much better when I have a goal in mind, or when I'm using some sort of "system."  That's a big part of why I love some of the Beachbody products, like P90X (and yes, I am completely twitterpated over P90X2) and TurboFire - they have set schedules, so I don't have to think about what workout I'm going to do that day.  If I'm given too much freedom and can just decide on a workout for the day, I will most likely choose lifting the fork to my mouth.  Specific plans for running have also helped me... I never would have started running without Couch to 5K and the half marathon training plan that I used, even though I ended up tweaking it, kept me on track.  But I've been in a bit of a limbo lately.  I'm a little burned out on TurboFire, so while I can see doing it as a supplemental workout, I don't want to start a whole new round of it.  Plus, I want to keep my running up, perhaps even training for another half. 

That being said, I feel like this year has been all about cardio, and I'm really missing strength training... to the point that I considered doing another round of P90X.  I must be in serious deprivation if I miss TOny Horton.  Well... that, and I patently refuse to see this on my heart rate monitor ever again, even if I've got several runs logged on my Garmin:


Lately, I've been seeing more and more information about CrossFit and I admit that I've been intrigued.  At first, I thought CrossFit looked interesting, but way too hardcore and elite for me.  Then one of my running idols started doing it, and since I consider her to be an athletic but normal person, I started thinking maybe it was worth a shot.  The only thing that I continually struggle with, though, is the money.  I don't have the gear or space to do a lot of the workouts, but most of the "affiliates" that I've looked into are absurdly expensive... we're talking a minimum of $100 a month.  I love an intense workout, but paying someone $100 or more a month to watch me sweat a lot and weep openly seems a little ridiculous.  

So I turned to another blogger that motivates me: the lovely Katie at Yes, I Want Cake (who is in such good shape she can have that cake).  Her blog was actually the first place I ever heard of CrossFit, and she's so hardcore that does it in her own garage.  Note to self: suck up to David a whole lot until he builds me my own hardcore CrossFit gym.  Anyway, between drooling over these waffles that she made and cooing at pictures of her adorable baby, I saw a mention of something called the 480 Workout.  So I checked it out.  And now my arms are making it very clear that they will never forgive me for this.

The workout seems simple enough - it's made of basic moves and through the workout, you build up the number of reps.  Easy, right?  


This workout rocked me.  I'm glad I did it, and I hate to say it, but I actually enjoyed it.  My only complaint was that it was pretty tough on the wrists - lots of pushups and burpees, which tend to bother my wrists.  So it probably won't become a 3-times-a-week workout for me, but I think it will be fun to do every so often and see if I can improve my time.  I will have to throw out today's time though (which was actually 25:37, because I warmed up for 7 minutes and then cooled down until 35:00) because it wasn't until I was explaining the workout to David that I realized I'd completely skipped the second set of 10 reps of each exercise.  Oops.  So, actually, I did the 400 Workout today.  It was still super hard.  Damn.

I added Ab Ripper X on at the end because I felt like I needed some more ab work.  And obviously I missed Tony Horton's beautiful face.  I'd forgotten how evil that workout is.  I love it, though, and I'm thinking that unlike the 480 Workout, I really should bring Ab Ripper X back into a 3-times-a-week rotation.  

I'm feeling pretty hardcore now, having completed that beast of a workout, even if I did leave 80 reps out (oops).  Maybe I'll even try some of the CrossFit workouts that don't require so much gear.  Or maybe I'll finally bite the bullet, buy myself a sandbag and an adorable pink GymBoss timer, and try to keep up with this girl.  

Yeah, she and I are definitely on the same level... in the same place that we wear the same bra size.  My dreams.

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It is past my bedtime.

Today's workout:
P90X Chest and Back + Ab Ripper X
430 calories/69 hateful minutes and 31 agonizing seconds


This will probably be a delusional post because I'm super tired...


... but D-Money insisted I blog so that he could read it.  Sweet.  But bordering on abusive.


And in case you're wondering, why yes, I am addicted to the vertical strip of pictures that I vainly take of myself on The Mugshot Machine.  I guess it isn't that vain though... I mean, look at what I'm showing you.  If you look closely, you can see the lovely little pooch of fat that gathers next to my armpit when I decide to go off plan for several months and eat a lot of this.

The same roommates that introduced me to Cats 101 (see latest Triple Tangent Tuesday for that gem) referred to that little fat deposit as the "baby vagina."  Call it what you will... it ain't pretty.


Today's workout... um... it was P90X.  What else can you say?  I did a whole lot of pushups and pull-ups.  I'd have to check my worksheet for exact numbers (and it is down two flights of stairs, so that obviously isn't happening) but I'm going to say I did about 8000.  Or at least that's what it felt like.  You know what doesn't feel good?  A whole bunch of pull-ups when you haven't done a single pull-up in months.  Yummy.  And before you start thinking I'm really hardcore, please know that I had a chair in front of me with one leg up on it at all times.  I think my legs are more sore than my back.

The real highlight of this workout was Ab Ripper X.  That workout is Satanic.  Anyone who thinks Lady Gaga is the Anti-Christ is incorrect.  Ab Ripper X is the Anti-Christ.

My girl Gaga is just a little special, that's all.


I think I probably only did about half of Ab Ripper X.  I had to keep taking breaks because I thought I was going to throw up.  That's a delightful feeling, isn't it?  You're going along, having a good workout, and then suddenly... that Cytomax/energy gel/drug of choice is biting you right in the ass.  All was well and I got to keep my breakfast, but I have to admit that I was worn out all day after this workout.  Meh.  Maybe I needed some more cardio to get the blood pumping?  Perhaps on top of my run tomorrow, I'll have a date with my bestie Chalene.  She'll tell me, "Guess what?  You're not tired!"  And I'll cry because I will be tired, and sweaty, and nasty... and she will still be able to kick me in the face with perfect bangs.



This is literally the limit of my mental capacity right now.  I swear I will have more coherent things to say tomorrow after serious amounts of sleep.  For right now, I will just say...

YOU GUYS ROCK AND YOU MADE MY WHOLE DAY!
While I was Skyping with David today (before he became super abusive and really nicely and supportively encouraged me to post tonight... the nerve of him) he informed me that I am now up to EIGHT READERS!  I'm not kidding, I did a happy dance with a huge grin on my face and just about peed my pants.  I know eight isn't a huge number (I'm no Skinny Runner or Hungry Runner Girl), but it's a big deal to me.  Selfishly, I'm excited and flattered that anyone thinks my whining is worthy of attention.  Slightly less selfishly, I know that when I was progressing through my weight loss journey and getting into fitness, it helped me a lot to read about other people and their struggles and triumphs... and if I can help anybody else out there, even if it's just my showing that even a Weight Watchers Lifetime member and Leader makes mistakes, it will make every late night blog post absolutely worth it. So THANK YOU LOVELY READERS!


And now I will pass out.  It will look a lot like that last sleepy picture, but with more drool.  You're welcome.
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It's alive! It's... ALIVE!

Frankenstein?  Maybe?  Kind of?  Okay, so I stop blogging for a few days and suddenly can't come up with any good titles.  Forgive me.  But I'm still alive!  And I felt like a really bad blogger for not posting anything for a few days and taking no nasty sweaty pictures of myself...

This is me feeling bad.  This is also a nasty picture, just not sweaty.  So it's part of the equation.  You're welcome.


But today, after feeling bad about myself all freaking day (more on that later) and thinking I was a blogging failure, I told myself to suck it up and POST SOMETHING ALREADY.


So here I am.  And yes, that is the color that my iSight camera currently thinks I am.  I'm a pretty girl.

So, catching up...
Saturday's run:
Couch to 5K Week Eight, Day One
3.0 miles/42:38

Today's workout:
Bob Harper fail and P90X Shoulders and Arms
494 calories/1:16:21


Saturday's run was another great trail run.  Not a whole lot to say about it - felt great to be outside, and I got out when it was still pretty cool out.  Apparently I'm just a trail runner - looking back on the last few weeks, all the runs that I felt great about were on the trail, and all the runs I felt iffy about were on a path near my house.  So now I'm looking into more trails to run, and possibly even some trail races.  Maybe I should get some trail running shoes?  You know I love a good excuse to buy shoes.

Today's workout was kind of an adventure.  As you know if you've been following my tirades about cross training, I'm kind of stumped on strength training.  I did P90X last summer and loved it, but since I want to focus on training for a half marathon for the next few months, I don't want to restart P90X completely and overtrain.  Plus, I felt I needed a break from it.  So I've been searching for alternatives, and thought I had struck gold when I came across Bob Harper's Pure Burn Super Strength.


With 85 reviews and an overall rating of 4.5 stars on Amazon, I thought this was a great idea.  It's advertised as an hour long full body strength routine, and people LOVE IT.  The Amazon reviews regularly say that it's a tough, but great workout, that it delivers great results, that Bob Harper is awesome... the reviews that won me over were from people who had done P90X and said that this workout was better and harder.

These people were all either lying through their teeth or total morons.

I hate this workout.  I got through 15 minutes of it before I was so irritated that I turned it off, apologized profusely for ever doubting P90X, and fell back into the supportive, rippling arms of this man.

You know the Bob Harper workout is annoying if I immediately saw Tony-loudmouth-Horton as refreshing.


Seriously.  Don't buy that Bob Harper workout.  And if you do want to buy it, buy it off of me.  Please.  Because I spent $15 on it at Barnes and Noble, and since I made the mistake of opening it, now I'm stuck with trying to peddle it on eBay.  I don't know why it got so many great reviews.  It's a chaotic workout - he gives you zero time to change weights, and maybe I'm just weird, but I like a different weight for squats, bicep curls, and shoulder presses.  My manly legs can handle more weight than my girly biceps.  But you don't have a spare second to change weights.  And good heavens, the editing of this thing!  If it was going for an Oscar, it might have a chance, but as a workout, it's crazy.  No joke, less than 15 minutes in, one of the girls on the side is grunting and grimacing, and they keep doing freeze frame shots of her scary faces in black and white.  I haven't seen overacting that bad since Tom Cruise went crazy on Oprah's couch.


But I digress.  So I did the P90X workout.  And felt like I was kind of going through the motions.  I burned about 400 calories, so it's not like I was wasting my time, I'm just kind of looking for something new.  

Which leads me to my question for the day:

Has anybody tried BodyRock?  Love it?  Hate it?  Indifferent?
I've seen her videos on YouTube before and came across the website this weekend for some reason and I'm intrigued.  I mean, who wouldn't be, look at that girl!  She's crazy hot!  I'd be okay with looking like that in a bikini, let's be honest.

Remember to tune in tomorrow for Triple Tangent Tuesday!  And I've still got a post I'm working on about the scale, which I plan on getting up tomorrow... I was newly inspired to finish it after reading this post from Cely at Running Off the Reese's.  

Sleep tight, fellow bloggers!
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Happy National Running Day!

How many miles did you choose to celebrate with?  I decided to celebrate by... not running at all.  Um...

But I love you guys and sent everybody good running vibes all day!


Today's workout:
Fire 45 EZ (new to class option)
514 calories/54:30


I freaking love Turbo Fire.  I need to remember that amazing feeling I get during every cool down when I'm getting all grumpy pants about working out.  And I'm a big fan of burning 500+ calories in one workout because let's face it, I love me some eating.

Wednesday is technically a rest day for Turbo Fire, but since I haven't been following the specified schedule for a while now, I thought it would be better to do what felt good than stress over it.  After all, I spent most of my morning stressed out about exercise - I worked myself into an emotional frenzy, convinced that the only way I could be successful and get these irritating 10 pounds off was to be doing Body Pump again.  Please disregard the fact that I made more changes to my body in 3 months of P90X than in several months of doing Body Pump regularly... and that my muscles tend to respond far faster to high weight/low rep strength training than the low weight/high rep training of Body Pump.  So when my completely reasonable and not crazy emotional mom tried to gently suggest that maybe I should not drop $250 on a membership to a gym I didn't even want to belong to just so I could go to a class that I liked two years ago (with a different instructor and different people in the group, obviously)... I kind of lost it and spent several hours moping around.  I'll admit it.  It was a pouty princess moment.

By the by, Ms. Hilton's new show The World According to Paris debuted tonight.  I watched about 3 minutes of it out of a morbid curiosity.  Oh, how I wish I could have those minutes back.


So after I whined and moped and pouted (I swear, you guys, I am not always such a big baby about everything), I thought to myself, "Hey, self... pull it together.  So you made a promise that you'd do Power Pairs every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a month, who cares?  Isn't it more important to get in a workout that you'll be happy with and excited about than to slave through some half-assed strength training just so you can whine about how much it sucked on your blog?"

I speak kindly to myself, I know.

Thus, Power Pairs was out and Turbo Fire was in.  And I have to brag a little... I was planning on doing Fire 30 just as a little quickie workout, but I have been wanting to try Fire 45 EZ because of one song in it.  A selection of the lyrics are as follows... ahem... "I'm a bad girl, break me like the law."  I can work with that.  So I tried it, and guess what, it might be my new favorite Turbo Fire workout!  It was an absolute blast, and despite not feeling energetic at the beginning, I managed to stay pretty pumped through the whole thing.  Now if I can just get that kind of energy to stick with me through tomorrow's run...
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In 10 hours, I'm paying someone to rip stuff out of my face.

Yesterday's workout:
P90X - Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps
55 minutes (ish)

Someone please explain to me how I dealt with this...


... for 90 days and didn't smash my television in.

But serious folks... this workout kinda sucked.  I'm not sure exactly why I picked Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps in the first place since it wasn't my favorite workout in the series... I probably would have been much happier with Chest and Back or Shoulders and Arms.  But it is what it is.  It was a hard workout, just like the whole P90X series, but the biggest challenge I faced was pure unadulterated boredom.  I was honestly just bored about halfway through.  The only real reason that I didn't stop was because I knew I was going to post it on here and wanted to avoid writing, "So... I started a workout... and then I bailed on it to eat cake."

Today was supposed to be a run day, but I woke up to cold weather and sore legs so I decided to just rest.  And it will actually be the first of many rest days because I am getting all four wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow.  

I am clearly thrilled about the entire situation. 

Really, I probably shouldn't be awake and blogging right now.  I should be sleeping because I will be up in about 6 hours to have my last 8 ounces of clear liquids for a while.  I already had my last solid meal for a while tonight.  It included Oreos and cupcakes.  You know, the important food groups.

To be entirely honest, I'm pretty darn scared about the whole thing.  It includes a lot of unwanted firsts for me: my first IV, my first time getting anesthesia, my first surgery... I could do without these, really.  And several people I know have had bad experiences with some part of the process so I've heard a few too many horror stories to be comfortable.  But I'm trying to be hopeful.  And will attempt to not cry on the surgeon's shoulder.  No guarantees.

Depending on how loopy I am on painkillers, I might post some gibberish tomorrow.  But no workouts for me for a week or so.  I know it's tragic, forced to sit still, watch television, and eat milkshakes... maybe I'm okay with this whole oral surgery thing after all.
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Here we go again...

I think I've now lost track of how many blogs I've started and abandoned.  Drifting around in cyberspace are a vast array of half-hearted attempts at my "getting it" with blogging - the blog I had to keep for my writing class in college, the blog I started with the intention of posting pictures of everything I ate during the day to keep me accountable to my weight loss, the blog created simply to whine about being unemployed...

The point is, I seem to struggle with finishing things.  Until now - crossing fingers.

I've been keeping track of my workouts in a spiral notebook for almost a year now, since I began P90X last May and Tony Horton yelled at me constantly about writing everything down.  It helped keep me accountable, and I found myself learning from each workout to the next.  So now I've decided to take it to the next level and hold myself accountable to whoever may come across this blog and actually have the patience to read it.  I've recently restarted a program that I completed two summers ago called Couch to 5K, and it's the first step I will take towards hopefully becoming a real runner (!) and running my first half marathon (!!!).

Plus, I want to ramble on about myself and since that normally meets with glazed eyes, I need to send it out into cyberspace so that even if your eyes glaze over reading this, I don't have to notice.

So here goes - time to start running for that bikini!
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