Because I Can't Let Go

I have a hard time letting go of things. I am working on it, but it is a big challenge on so many levels. Recent examples:

• It shreds me to let my boys walk away from me and get on the plane. Inside I'm weeping and grasping. On the outside I'm playing all cool and giving them age appropriate hugs (bigger for the ten year old and only tight enough for the teenagers to be able to pretend to be embarassed, but not tight/big/long enough for them really to want to pull away first). I'm working on waving casually. I don't know how stealthy I am about it but I cannot keep myself from breathing in deeply in that last minute as if to pull some part of them back to hold onto even as they walk away from me.
• I have some clothes that need to go. Clothes that I don't wear and a few things that I have had for over 15 years. Mind you - I don't have a lot of clothes total. Shopping is not remotely my thing. It's not like my closet is bursting at the seams. But it has been bugging me recently to see these few things that are lingering. I don't know why I am holding on to them. I'm blaming this one on inertia.
• Football season is over - really over. Waaaannnnnhhhhh. I am jonesing for pigskin and I have months and months to wait. (While it is no substitute for the actual game, there is some off-the-gridiron drama percolating. With this past week's franchise tags going out and free agency starting next week and the draft in April, I can at least read about football. And talk about it. A teeny little bit. Like this rant - I am TRYING to like* Dallas but they are making it well nigh impossible. They let Pacman Jones go (which is key) but now there's rumbling that they might bid for Ray Ray? Bleck!!!!!! He's the player I despise most who doesn't already play for the Cowboys.)
  
• Water weight. I ate sushi yesterday for the first time in ages and ages**. And promptly gained two pounds. That is a pound per sushi roll! I promise you they do not weigh that much in and of themselves. I'm giving that bottle of "reduced sodium" soy sauce the evil eye but that's not getting rid of the poundage. Maybe the three gallons of water and peppermint tea I'm drinking today will flush the "reduced sodium" out of my system along with those opportunistic extra pounds!
  

In training news, I have some track workout questions for you. Next weekend I have a track workout that calls for doing ten of the following twelve drills (my choice) each for 100m:
1.Walk on Toes
2.Walk on Toes (Heels in, Heels Out)
3.Walk on Heels
4.Walk on Heels (Toes in, Toes Out)
5. Strides
6. Butt Kicks
7. High Knee running
8. Karaoke***
9. Skipping
10.High Knee Skips
11. Butt Kicks
12. Run Backwards – pushing off from your fore foot

The astute observer will note that the rat bastards who designed this plan said there were tweleve drills to choose from but then listed "butt kicks" twice thereby reducing the available choices to eleven. Which, in my way of thinking, means I only get to cross one off the list. I'm tempted to cross "butt kicks" off the list just on principle. Clearly I'm keeping the walking ones and the skipping one on the list because I know for a fact I can actually do those. (You see how hardcore I am about pushing my limits, right?) Cindy just mentioned a guy running backwards at the track and I was all "dude - I haven't even mastered the running forwards part" when ACK "running backwards" appears on the list. So I wanted to knock that one off the list, lest I do a skull plant and kill myself at the track. Then I saw the warning for the "Strides" drill that says, "Do not attempt this exercise if you’re not conditioned for high intensity activities." EEK. Now I want to strike that one off the list. But then Karaoke*** looks like a death trap of the tangled feet variety. I haven't even been brave enough to look up "High Knee Skips" but chances are that one is dangerous too! What is a klutzy girl to do?!! Do y'all do these? What exactly are these drills designed to help? Does it work?

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend! Peace out.

*And by "like" what I mean is "not loathe and detest". (Gotta walk before you can run.) I wouldn't even do that much because it's a serious effort, but my no-longer-blogging-or-I'd-link-to-her pal Cindy is a Dallas fan who started rooting for the Titans because of me. How can I not reciprocate?
**Where "ages" is entirely subjective and feels like months and possibly years, but may in fact appear to outsiders to be about 10 days.
***This looks like the grapevine dance step to me and maybe most of you knew what "karaoke" was vis a vis running. I was mildly disappointed (though not surprised) to see that it did not involve alcohol, cheesy music and laughing my ass off with friends at people who can't sing. On the other hand - the boy in this video is niiiiicccce to look at (IMHO) and that helped somewhat. Though (natch) it leads me to questions about how to apply this drill. He says to work one leg, you go one direction. Does that mean I would do 50 m one way and 50 m back? Or two separate 100 m stints, one on each side? And if I did the latter, then could I get away with counting it as two of my ten, thereby crossing a whole other drill of the list for the day? What think you?

Stronger All Around

Until our "official" training plan kicks in mid-March, we have target workout amounts rather than sport specific workouts. Donna is much better about hitting her target than I am. But I'm getting there. Today I stretched myself and managed to learn the next combination in our Dance Cardio routine. I lengthened my workout time and pushed that emotional/mental anxiety barrier by trying something new and complicated. Stronger than before!

I've had a lot of sassy, negative voices in my head since the new year began. I meant to defang them earlier by talking about them, but there's been so much else going on that I slipped back into the old pattern of being "fine" on the outside while they gnaw on me on the inside. No more! It may be cliche and unimaginative to resolve to lose weight starting January first but really, I resolved last February to lose 40 lbs. (<--Which more or less didn't happen - I lost a few pounds but right after the Pacific Grove triathlon they found their way back home and brought a few friends along.) Then I re-resolved to lose these pounds on December 8th and it took me a couple of weeks of fixing to get ready to get started before I had a workable plan. That's when the voices kicked in - whispering insidiously, "You didn't make it happen last year, what makes you think you can do it this year?" They warn me not to tell too many people about this pie in the sky goal lest I be embarrassed on top of being disappointed when I don't reach my goal. The voices wonder if talking about my weight will cause other people to pay closer attention to my size and shape. Whisper, nag, undercut, cackle, mutter - the voices have not shut up since I started articulating my weight goal. STUPID FUCKERS!! I hate those voices. I hate them because they are right in a way - I don't want to be embarrassed on top of being disappointed; I don't want anyone looking more closely at me right now. Hell - I don't want to look more closely at myself because it gives those voices that much more ammo. However - I want this. I want to be lean and athletic. I need less padding and more strength to do what I want to do in this world. Another thing the voices don't want me to say out loud (lest I sound fruity and new agey and I don't know, crazy*) is that I had a dream on January 8th from which I woke up absolutely believing I can do it this year. It was a rock solid feeling. It was all me believing in myself without any doubts. No doubts about my ability to achieve my aim, no doubts about the hard work it will take to get there, no doubts about why I want what I want - no doubts at all. It was such a strong feeling that it lasted most of the day where other feelings left from dreams evaporate before the teeth can even get brushed. The voices were practically silent for the rest of the week. Of course they've come back but I am sick of them! I don't think I'll have another dream to help me fight them off again so I'm pushing back the only other way I know how:

I'm putting it out there - I intend to weigh 127 lbs on or before November 7, 2009. Losing a pound a week should get me there. That is doable - even if I personally have never done it. I am strong. Stronger than before!

I have more to say but it'll have to wait for another post. Remind me if I get distracted by something shiny and forget to post it - I have more treasure in the form of some long lost pictures. Peace out y'all!


*Like hearing "voices" isn't the textbook definition of crazy?

In Which I Cave Due To Peer Pressure

Okay fine. You asked for WGF video? You got it:


Confession: that's not actually me. But it's close enough I say! Peace and good luck this weekend, racers - especially to marathoner D10! Go girl!

Redbone 'Robics

Alternate post title: White Girl Flailing, Now With Hounds. Yeah, I had a little company for Cardio Dance. In case you were wondering, it was not helpful. And for those of you (cheeky buggers) who have asked for a video of WGF - dream on! I won't be held responsible for the many computer monitors that would be thusly damaged by snarfled coffee and I certainly don't have the liability coverage to pay medical expenses for those who would literally bust a gut laughing at me. So. No video of me. Ever. In case you were wondering.

Cardio Humiliation

We finally got our Dance Cardio DVD. (It had been delivered to our neighbors by our slackass, gnats-for-brains mailman, but I digress.) Donna and I immediately grabbed a bag of chips and sat down on the sofa to watch it put on our workout clothes and prepared to dance!

HA! What an amazingly intimidating piece of work this video is! We did have to spend about 15 minutes watching it and psyching each other up before we could start with the "5, 6, 7, 8..." If I'd been alone, I would have cried and pretended like the disc had gone permanently astray in the mail. How people do this stuff without a Donna to motivate them and keep them company, I will never know. We finally got up enough nerve to work painstakingly through the break down of the first of eleventy million maybe seven combinations. Rocky but doable (after about 30 minutes of intense concentration). Then we tried it up to speed.

HA! What a joke! I swear she threw in a couple of extra little somethings but she was moving waaaaay too fast for me to figure out what they were. My fall back strategy from my long ago step aerobics classes came in handy: I bounced in time with the music until we got to a part of the routine I remembered and could jump back in. Sadly, of the four eight-counts that made up the combination - I bounced for at least three of them on average. I could not for the life of me get my pliees or my pedal spin or my sassy little skips fast enough to catch up with her! And if I did get something right, when she reversed directions to work the other side of the body? I was a mess. I did consistently manage the first steps (right, left, right) and the last two beats (jumping jacks in place). My routine went something like this - step, step, step, "dammit!" bounce, bounce, twirl (wrong direction "dammit!"), bounce, skip ("dammit! dammit! how does she do two of them so quickly?!"), bounce, bounce, step ball change, power arms, "crap! missed that AGAIN!", bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, (pant), bounce, JUMPING JACK, JUMPING JACK!

There was a bunch of claptrap at the beginning of the video about specific angles of movement and the benefits of working particular muscle groups in precise coordination. I'm sure that's all fine and well. If and when I get past the "white girl flailing" stage, I'll let you know how that works out for me.