Not So Tough Anymore

The human body is amazing.

Really.

I have been doing CoreFit and Tabata classes now for 11 weeks. Technically 9 since I missed two weeks due to travel and being sick.

The first week of CoreFit and Tabata was shocking in its difficulty. I barely survived the class and then I limped around for days afterwards as my muscles protested. The next few weeks were still pretty brutal but a little less so because at least I knew what to expect.

I missed two weeks and then the first week back was pretty tough.

The last two weeks though, something happened at Thursday evening's Tabata classes. I actually surprised myself by thinking 'this really isn't that hard anymore'. In fact, last week in the middle of the class I thought 'this really isn't challenging enough'.

I can hold the side planks. I can lift the weights. I can lift the weights while holding the planks. And at the end of it all I can drive home, have dinner, shower and not feel an overwhelming desire to collapse into bed.

I love these classes and I think they have really helped me get stronger in ways that my other workouts were not able to.

But I no longer walk into the class hoping to survive. I now walk into the class excited for a good workout followed by an evening luxuriating on the couch with a good book.

It's amazing what the human body can get used to isn't it?

What about Tuesday's CoreFit you ask? Well that class is another kinda beast entirely and still leaves me shaky-limbed and exhausted at the end. Gonna be a few more weeks yet before I write about how 'easy' CoreFit is.

CoreFit - Week Four

It's hard to believe that I have already been to four weeks of CoreFit sessions. Or as Doug calls them, my Hercules classes. It feels like only yesterday that I finished my first class and woke up the next morning to discover that I could not sit down or stand up without support and could not get out of bed without rolling off the edge of the mattress.

How young and innocent I was back then when I first walked into that big empty gym and grabbed my fitness ball and my weights. How little I knew about what lay ahead, how hard it would be and yet how quickly I would adapt.

In four short weeks I have gone from being unable to hold those tippy-toe squats to trying not to throw up while I held them to kinda wishing we did one more before we move on. 

I have gone from being unable to hold the plank for the allotted time to being able to lift weights while planking (oh yes, it is indeed possible).

See?

In fact this week I even managed a side plank while hoisting weights up over my head. Not once but 15 times.

 

Sorta like this

My arms, legs, abs and back all feel stronger and, for the first time, feel like they are working team rather than every muscle for themself. And the challenge-seeking part of me enjoys the fact that every week we do a few new things that continue to keep us pushing hard and laughing at ourselves. 

For example: at the end of Tuesday's class we were asked to lie down on our stomachs. Put our hands into fists and plant them (knuckles down) firmly on the ground on either side of us - right near the bottom of our rib cage. Plant our toes. Tighten all of our muscles and, in once graceful motion, lift ourselves up into a plank.

Most of us lay on the ground laughing because we couldn't raise our bodies at all without our abs and arms turning into al dente spaghetti noodles. Our instructor however made it look so easy and motivated me at least to want to be able to do it. 

By the end of the class, we were promised, we would be strong enough to be able (or almost able) to do that move. Yay! A new goal.

Four weeks in, eleven to go.

Come back tomorrow to find out how well CoreFit and Diabetes play together in the sandbox.

July Roundup

How is it possible that it's August already? How is it possible that it's now dark when I get up to go swimming? It wasn't dark a few weeks ago but now it is. We've turned the corner folks. Time to start sharpening our pumpkin carving knives and pulling our sweaters out of mothball storage (that is if anyone actually does that anymore?).

August first means that it's time to report on how July went in the exercise department. 

Here's what the numbers looked like: 

Cycling

I cycled once. Very embarrassing but true. I blame it on wedding showers (still!!) and rain. Anyway, I've cycled a total of 1.5 hours and covered a whopping 32.5k. Sigh.

Strength

I have added that strength training workout I wrote about last week. I've done it three times so far. I'm not sure how to report on strength training other than to say how many times I've done it and happily report that each time my muscles were less sore afterwards. 

Running

I ran 12 times. I covered 85k in 9.5 hours. I did two interval sessions (both 6x800m), two hill training sessions and one unexpected tempo run on Tuesday. My Saturday long runs have been 9-10k. I'll be adding distance to those in August but I'm very happy with how things went in July. 

Swimming

I'm back in the swimming groove. I swam 7 times and covered 23450m in 10 hours. I've done distance sets, 75m sprint sets, 100m repeats until I can't remember my own name sets and have loved them all. Best moments? When I managed to somehow do 100m in 1:35 and this past Wednesday when I had to do 16x100m on 2:00 and kept all of them between 1:44 and 1:47 (pretty fast for me and very consistent which was the whole point of the workout). 

Golf

I golfed 8 times in July. Some 9-hole games and a bunch of 18-hole games as well. 8 games translates into 21 hours of walking (while carrying golf clubs) and I covered 52k worth of manicured lawns on my own two feet. All the walking had me a little worried about how my cranky shins and once-broken foot would hold up but they seem to be doing just fine. If fact I went for a massage this week and was told that my legs felt better than they have in years. 

Grand total

I did 30 different workouts in July. I had six days off but every other day I did at least one thing. My body was active and moving a total of 43 hours and on feet, wheels or in the water I covered 190km. 

My body seems happy with all the exercise and seems to respond well to the variety. 

Looks like I'm not a 'put all your eggs in one basket' kinda girl. 

August goals 

Find more time for the bike and try to get 10 of those strength training workouts in. Everything else I'm happy with as it is. 

Working out my Stubborn Muscles

I stopped at Sobey's after work yesterday to pick up a few groceries. Sobey's is not my usual grocery store location but it was right beside where my last appointment of the day ended so I figured a bird in the hand...

I need 3 things so I grabbed one of those hand baskets instead of a cart.

I went to the produce section and grabbed the cucumber, the red pepper and the fennel I wanted. I spotted some lovely looking avocados that would be ready to eat by Saturday so I grabbed two of those. The bananas I saw next were that perfect shade of yellow/green so I grabbed a bunch.

Then I saw lemons and limes so I tossed two of each in the basket because I go through those like they're going out of style and I had decided to make one of my famous veggie/grain/legume salad for my dinner. The dressing is needs fresh lemon juice AND zest.

Onions! We finished the last one the night before with our steak so I tossed a fresh bag in.

Then Doug texted in response to my earlier message to ask for bagels. No problem!

And since I was in a different grocery store than I was used to, I decided that I might as well wander the aisles to see what else they had.

A piece of salmon to complement my salad ended up in the basket. So did a box of my favourite cereal. And a bag of Skittles for my sister. And some of the cheese we like and couldn't find last week at our regular store. Oh, and some broth because we were running low and I wanted to simmer my grain/legume mix in it.

You can imagine how, at this point, my shoulder felt like it was being wrenched out of its socket as I lugged the overflowing basket of groceries up one aisle and down the other.

When I finally made it to the check out line, the lady in front of me in line, who had much less than I did, actually offered to let me go first. I politely declined and joked about it being my upper body workout.

And then I laughed. There was a day when I was not as strong as I am now. And I would have grabbed a cart so I didn't have to carry a basket full of food. Now I actually have some upper body strength so I grab a basket and then stubbornly lug it around even though it's way too heavy and there are carts within easy reach.

*sigh*

Guess I don't need to work out my stubborn side. Those muscles are in fabulous shape.

Just ask Doug.

He'll tell you all about it.

Poolside Boot Camp

I'm not much of a fan of workout classes. Yes I've done my share of step classes and yoga classes but that was a long time ago and I much prefer solitary runs or group bike rides to parking myself between strangers and doing what the person at the front of the room tells me to do. It's only in the pool that I seem to enjoy a class-type setting with an instructor yelling at me to work harder. Perhaps it's because, with my head under water most of the time and everyone too busy trying to survive to pay much attention to me, it still feels rather solitary.

Wednesday at the pool was an entirely different experience for me and it felt suspiciously like boot camp.

Christine planned out one of her resistance classes. My favourite kind of class. She told us that we were going to break into two groups. Group one was being tethered to the wall with stretch cords. They had to swim out until they felt resistance and then hold their position for 20 strokes. Then they had to go harder and hold that for 20 more strokes. Increase a third time and hold that for 20 strokes. Head back to the wall for 30 seconds and do it again. Repeat ten times.

The other group (my group) were going to swim 200m twice. The hitch was that we were going to have a pull cord clipped to our waist with a bucket (the kind a kid would bring to the beach to make sand castles) attached at the end. We had to swim while dragging a very resistant bucket behind us.

Enter boot camp. "Oh, and between each 200m I want you to hop out of the pool and do ten pushups, three times" announced Christine.

"How about one pushup once?" I mumbled to George.

Pushups fall in that category of things my body just can't seem to do. I can lower myself down but, if I lower all the way down, I can't even push back up once. It's like I'm stuck and is embarrassing and frustrating at the same time. Now she wants 30?

I attached the belt around my waist and dropped the bright blue bucket with the pretty fish drawings into the water. We headed off. For the record, two hundred metres pulling a small bucket is surprisingly hard and ridiculously slow. Christine waited until we finished before she announced that she used to pull kayaks behind her when she was training in the canal for her Lake Ontario swim.

"Yes but I bet they weren't bright blue with fishies painted on them!"

We dragged ourselves out of the water and on to the pool deck - to the amusement of Doug and the other folks in the lane swim. Some of us were better pushuppers than others but, on the whole, we sucked. I did three sets of 7 half pushups which means I lowered myself about half way down and shakily hoisted myself back up again. I switched to the lady pushups halfway through that because I was shaking so much I thought I'd break my nose on the pool deck when I collapsed.

Back into the water for another 200m of bucket pulling. Back out for another pathetic push up frenzy. Then it was time to switch to the stretch cords - my favourite! I did ten of those and, while they are hard and exhausting, I love them. It was now 6:33am.

"Switch!" Christine yelled.

What?!? I have to do more pushups??

I headed back to my bucket and tied it on. I headed off to slog through another 200m, wondering if this was the moment I finally say no to something she wants me to do. My arms were so spent and I dreaded the thought of having to push myself up even one more time.

That, my friends, is when the whistles blew. See, we had been smelling faint whiffs of smoke during our workout but the lifeguards couldn't figure out what it was or where it was coming from.  It wasn't bad enough to really worry but, after a while, they apparently decided was important enough to evacuate the building so, at 6:40am they blew their whistles and sent us scurrying to the locker rooms for a 'fast shower'. By the time I walked out to the entrance there were three fire trucks with their lights flashing and a gaggle of firefighters in full gear walking around.

I'm still not sure what happened but the pool was open again the same day so obviously nothing too major.

Wednesday night, as I lowered myself down into bed, I felt a deep ache in my abs. Like I had done a few too many planks. Except that I don't do planks.

Oh wait, yes I do...when I'm doing pushups on the pool deck at 6am.

By Thursday morning I had to roll on my side to push myself out of bed because I could not sit up for the ache in my muscles. By Thursday afternoon it hurt to laugh and by Thursday night I was wondering if I'd be able to swim in the morning.

I will admit (grudgingly) that the occasional pool side boot camp is probably a good idea. But it doesn't mean that I have to like it.

The scene that greeted the 7am swimmers when they arrived at the pool for their morning swim. 

Fitness

I find the notion of ‘fitness’ interesting.

In my world, people mention the word with a fair degree of frequency but never really talk about it. Fitness is used more as a catchall term – I can run faster than I could last year because my fitness level is higher. I can swim more lengths because I have better fitness.

But what the heck is fitness? And why am I all of a sudden thinking about it?

Monday morning masters’ swimming is what triggered the whole thing. It was a busy morning at the pool and we had 6 people instead of the usual 3-4 in our class. There was a girl that I have not seen since the summer class whom I knew to be fast. Our assistant coach Jamie joined the workout and there was a new guy I had never seen but figured out from the way he did his warm-up that he had been in the pool once or twice before...

Then there was me and two other regulars who have been swimming hard three times a week for several weeks or more.

In other words, a bunch of people one might describe as ‘fit’.

After our 1200m warm-up, Christine has us do 12x50m followed by 3x(150m, 100m, 50m). Towards the end of the workout, you could tell we were all exhausted. The recovery period no longer felt long enough and our times were getting slower. Some people would groan every time she said ‘go!’. I mumbled ‘shit’ under my breath more times than I care to admit and the guy in my lane who seems to spend his life doing one activity or another was gasping and looking pretty humbled by the end.

Despite the grumblings and the heaping serving of humble pie, we all survived the workout because we are ‘fit’. We will all be recovered and ready for more on Wednesday morning because we are ‘fit’. Yet I found it interesting that, no matter what our overall activity schedule is – we were all struggling at the end of our swim. There are hard-core, competitive swimmers in our group. There are triathletes (me!). There are people who do a wide variety of activities in a week (running, cycling, swimming, weight lifting AND yoga). No one seemed immune to swimming exhaustion.

So I looked up fitness in Wikipedia. First of all, there are apparently two kinds of fitness: general (which refers to our overall state of health and well-being) and specific (which refers to our ability to perform specific aspects of a sport or activity).

The general health part takes into consideration things like: flexibility, cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, muscle endurance etc. The specific skill part deals with things like: agility, balance, coordination, speed, reaction time and power.

Ok, that makes sense. But how do I know how fit I am?

I then went on to see if I could find ways to measure my overall fitness and found some pretty entertaining websites. One wanted me to power walk for a minute and then take my pulse. Then they wanted me to do as many pushups as I could. Powerwalking would be fine but the pushup thing would place me somewhere close to the nearly dead part of the fitness scale. I can’t do one – never have been able to.

Another site told me to get a stopwatch, measuring tape and a scale. I stopped reading at that point so I’m not sure exactly what I was going to be measuring. The distance from the couch to the fridge perhaps and how quickly I could get there and back? Followed by a quick hop on the scale to see what sort of damage the cheese tray caused?

Then I found some other sites that describe the fitness tests that those in the military have to pass. Scary stuff that is.

Fitness seems to be this umbrella terms that covers many things. The 100m dash runners in the Olympics have superb muscle strength and the ability to perform anaerobically. Marathon runners, on the other hand, have muscle endurance and the ability to perform aerobically. Is one more fit than the other?

I don’t really know.

What I do know is that, last year, when I was running five days a week I was exhausted and sore all the time despite having two days off to recover. This year, I am working out 6-7 days a week. I am working out harder and for longer periods. I should be more sore and more exhausted but I’m not. The opposite is true.

I might be exhausted after a hard workout in the pool but I can complete it and keep up with everyone else. I recover enough to run the next morning and swim again the morning after that.

Last year I was fit. This year I am fit. But my fitness level is better. I’m still not exactly sure what that means but I can sure feel it to be true. 

Ninety Seconds is a Long Long Time

Did anyone watch Run Run Revolution a few weeks ago?  It was a CBC documentary about a bunch of high school kids in Ottawa who were chosen to be part of a fitness program.  They worked with a coach to prepare to run a relay as well as the 5k. They ran these races in Boston this year during marathon weekend.  Pretty neat story and amazing to watch how far the kids were able to push themselves.

One of the things that they had to be able to do by the end of their training was to hold a plank for 90 seconds.  It was hilarious to watch their first few tries.  Wobbly-armed, they would collapse in a heap after about 10 seconds, flatly refusing to get up again.  They slowly made it to twenty seconds, thirty seconds and, by the end, a 90 second plank was no big deal.

Now, runners are notorious for having weak upper bodies.  It's understandable.  We put in hours of exercise a week but all of it is focused on our lower bodies.  After all that, who has time to lift weights, do push ups or whatever else we're supposed to do to strengthen the arms, shoulders and back?

Watch us.  We have strong, muscular legs and spindly little arms.  It's kinda funny actually.

Well, I decided that I could certainly fit a 90 second plank into my post-run stretching routine.  I figured it would help build my core up a little bit, strenghten my shoulders and, well, just make me feel a little less guilty about neglecting those parts.

And, I figured that, if a bunch of high school kids could hold a plank for 90 seconds, well then so could I.

I set my Garmin face up below me, got into position and hit start on the timer.  I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing.  In. Out. In. Out.  This is soooooo easy. 

Open eyes. Fifteen seconds!?!  You have got to be kidding.

By thirty seconds I was shaking.

By 45 seconds there was sweat running dripping off the tip of my nose and by 60 seconds, I was no longer breathing as much as gasping.

I managed to hold on for the entire time.  I did not lower myself gracefully to the mat.  I collapsed with an audible sigh of relief.  Holy bananas!  That's HARD!

I have since done three of these 90 second planks.  I'm still shaking by thirty seconds and sweating profusely by 45. I have yet to lower myself gracefully to the floor.

I have a lot of respect for those kids.  They almost looked bored holding their planks for so long by the end.  I just look like I'm trying not to die.

I'm sure it will get better. 

But man oh man, 90 seconds feels like forever.

Quidam

My mother and I have decided that we're going to sign up for circus school.

It's never too late to follow your dreams.

For those of you who are aware of the genetic disorder my mother and I share, that first sentence would be rather amusing. You see, both my mother and I discovered very early on in life that we will never be the cute little girls who can do cartwheels and roundoffs.  Neither she, nor I, have ever been able to do a somersault.

Ever.

I still have very vivid memories of Gymnastics Week in our gym class.  We had a checklist of things we had to work through in order to complete that portion of the class.  First thing on the list - somersault.  Followed by back somersault.  Headstand. Handstand. Cartwheel. Roundoff. Backflip.  It just became more and more horrifying as you looked down the list.  On day one, I spent the entire hour trying to do a somersault.  By the end of that same hour, all of the girls and most of the boys had made it to the backflip. I was mortified.

I went home and my mother helped me practice on the living room floor. Even in the safety of my own home I couldn't do it. I cried. She told me the story about how, when she was a little girl, she had to do a somersault in gym class and couldn't do it.  So her mother (my nana) helped her practice on the living room floor.  She never managed to do one either.

We are not gymnasts her and I.

And here we are, decades later, deciding that we're going to circus school. All because of some little show we saw called Quidam.

Put on by the folks from Cirque du Soleil.

Ah-mazing!

I have seen several Cirque shows, including their first one put on at Canada's Wonderland before anyone even knew who they were.  Even then in their tiny little tent they were amazing.

Feats of strength that are so unbelievably controlled and graceful that you forget for a moment how impossible they are.

Aerial performances that make you feel like you're in the presence of angels.

And hysterical theatrics that had us in stiches.

It was a great evening.  We talked about it non-stop all the way home.  What roles we'd like to have based on our skill sets.  My mother hates heights and anything scary, is not very strong or flexible but is sure that there is a role for her.  I'm better at strength and endurance than grace and agility so I'm thinking I'd do well hanging from ropes or being one of the strong foundations in the human pyramid scenes. 

Seriously though - as someone who spends a lot of time and energy working on strength and fitness - it's pretty humbling to be in the presence of such strong human specimens.  They looked more like gods and goddesses than humans.

It's really inspiring and makes me want to dedicate a bit more time working on my upper body strength and flexibility.  Because you never know when you might be asked to be an understudy for the aerial ballet scene.