Tag: challenges

challenges

I’m Not Afraid

2chicksandapen

I’m not afraid of burpees anymore.

I am no longer dreading 72 burpees in workout because I’ll be the slowest to complete them.
I am no longer completely wiped out by burpees. 10-15-20 easy peasy.

It might have taken me over 1,200 burpees in a short period of time to realize this. I learned practice makes perfect or it definitely builds confidence in your weak or feared movements.

In the past, I would do pushups instead of burpees in a workout. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do them. I didn’t want to do them. I would just prefer not to do burpees. I took the easy way out time and time again.

Then one day I said yes to a burpee challenge online. Little did I know that burpee challenge would teach me to endure in many ways. Little did I know it would help me stabilize my breathing while doing burpees with other movements. Little did I know my fear wasn’t worth fearing anymore.

I slowed down enough to take it all in. To practice vs. rush through. I am still not fast at burpees and never will be thanks to my hip mobility but I can get them done in much larger sets. I am not that graceful when I do burpees either. They are what I call sloppy burpees.

Nonetheless I can drop and do 5-10-15-20 or more at my pace without hesitation. I may not love to do them but I can and I will because they have provided many benefits in a short time.

My bench press one rep max has improved. All those extra burpees have caused me to push my body weight up from the ground repeatedly, increasing my pushing strength without me noticing. On that same line, my push ups have improved drastically. My overall form. My endurance. My strength. My ability to do unbroken sets with strong form in my core.

When we mention core muscle, I recently started doing more planks. Not a movement I’ve feared but one I really don’t like to do: well guess what I noticed my time for holding the plank and the the firmness of the plank itself has also improved. Crazy to think how much consistency plays a role in success.

Consistent and persistent are two words that are forever defined in my life in many ways. Sometimes you need to slow down in one area of life to see how you can adapt consistency and/or persistence in other areas.

Trust the process of life. Absorb the learning experiences around you. Test your limits often. Growth comes when you are stretched, fatigued and out of your norm.

Change your surroundings. Try something new. Challenge yourself to do hard things you fear. Growth is a mindset. Sometimes it takes practice. Consistent practice yields results. 

challenges, friendship

Garage Games Part Two

2chicksandapen

It’s the Garage Games Competition time. Master’s division/scaled for this girl this weekend. I wrote about the preparation for this comp a few weeks back but so much has happened in between that post and the actual competition itself.

Corona waves hit some of the competitors I knew, making their prep come to a halt. The recovery for COVID and its impact on one’s lungs will make competing extra grueling for these folks. They will get it done at their best level for that day. I will be cheering for them between rounds as I can.

The comp itself changed some setup rules to accommodate for more social distancing due to waves hitting the area. Only active athletes competing can be inside the gym for their heat. No fans cheering. No warm ups in the gym. No watching the heat before yours. So many changes. These workouts are non-forgiving so that extra cheer will make a difference for some who want to give up in the moment.

Warmups are outside but it’s freezing out. So very cold at 6am, 7am and so on. The bars are cold. The chill is in the air. So that’s a whole different element of warming up your body and then performing in a different temperature inside. 

Talk about added stress for me. It’s also stressful to know I will immediately be shuffled outside as a sweaty mess to cool down in the elements. That’s a recipe to get sick as in a cold. Not COVID but a cold. Unfortunately, now days a cold is like COVID where you have to be locked up if you have the slightest cough or sniffle. So yeah I’m not thrilled.

The reality is also hard to think about visualizing how you compare to others on that big board outside of your home gym when you might feel like a big fish in your pond but when you go in the ocean you seem so much smaller. 

The leaderboard is part of the experience. The measuring stick. How you measure up to others who are CrossFit junkies in your age band of 5 years. There is no asterisk next to your name that says competed under duress. For me the comp is a challenge of myself. The will to push through and thrive as a party of one in hard times. In today’s crazy climate which is a shit show on most days. The temperature elements in the environment. The COVID restrictions. The lack of cheering. It all dials back to just me. Which ironically has been what a lot of 2020 has been for me.

Self discovery. Finding hope inside of oneself. Pushing through individually. A party of one it literally is. My daughter and friends are coming to cheer me on through the windows. Thanks to COVID they have to stay outside in the cold for the safety of the athletes participating. I get it but that’s part of the competition. The crowd. The cheers. The roars. As a competitor I feed off that. There will only be silence and the silence will kill your performance if you let it!

This is a battle I wasn’t expecting when I signed up. I guess I could just celebrate that’s it’s not canceled but I can’t. The reason for this is I did a few virtual races already this year and I again missed the chaos of the crowd, the cheers and the small touches that make those events fun.

When will the world stop snatching all the fun things from us? How long will the madness of isolation, separation, and masked life and more go on? My pals improvised. They made signs and yelled through doorways. I loved their efforts.

My mini group will have fun in our outdoor parking space of solidarity. Socially distanced. Bundled up in warm onesies and blankets. No hot cocoa. No fire barrel but maybe we will have a makeshift heater. Here’s to parking lot madness on a Saturday with good people getting their fitness grind on. This is what masters do. They master adversity. It’s a sign of grit.

(drum roll please) Comp results:

I completed all three taxing workouts.

I didn’t die although I was exhausted.

I changed outfits three times so I wouldn’t be sitting in sweaty clothes in the elements.

I wore a hat during a comp for the first time ever!

I met a cool competitor today and we took a ton of pics together.

I had fun with all the parking lot shenanigans.

I munched on comp snacks from the darkness of the morning through the day.

I put up my best efforts given the environmental challenges.

Now I get to see where I fall on the leaderboard. Took the gold for the local comp. Let’s see if I make to the big board.

It’s time to move on. A new day. A new week. A new month. A new year is on the horizon. On to bigger and better things as this event is now history.

The next event on the chopping block is sunrise yoga with the girls for a fun holiday gathering since we can do this distanced. How are you ringing in the holidays this year?

challenges

Virtual Peach

2chicksandapen

Most of 2020 has been a cluster fuck including my paid races, competitions and special events. I’ve been muttering through the disappointment.

Just spinning in a new direction to get by. Earlier this year I was to run the Wonder Woman 10k in Nashville. That was a no go but I did it virtual. My time was off and I didn’t like it much. 

The lack of crowds. The lack of a defined course was just a lot of blah. I ran slower. I walked some. It was a mental struggle in many ways against the clock and me. I did it because that was the goal but I didn’t enjoy the event. 

Fast forward to today. The normal 4th of July Peachtree Road Race was postponed to Thanksgiving Day. Then it was made virtual for the week of Thanksgiving. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it. I was on vacation. Would I even have time? Did I even want to do it and so on.

On a whim I did it today. Turkey day. In the Sunshine State. It started out okay up until mile 3. My route was like a hamster wheel of round and round and round again which I didn’t like. No crowds. No race number. No water stations. No mile markers to show progress. The list goes on and on just like this damn pandemic. The picture below even reflects the hamster wheel-like motion we have been on for close to a year. Just blah.


What I did enjoy was my alone time. My ability to drift off and think of what I’m thankful for. What I have to look forward to. What is next on my projects list. I even thought about what 2020 would have looked like without the pandemic.

My slowest 10k time in about 6 years but I finished. I added 6 flights of stairs at the end to simulate cardiac hill that is on the regular course. I kept my annual streak going but since I did the run solo I broke the tradition with my mini. It’s okay but a little disappointing nonetheless.

2021 is sure to have many things I will be excited to accomplish but many things I will say I’ll take a pass on because of the blah in 2020. The Peachtree unfortunately may be one of them. 

challenges, fitness and nutrition

Approaching 100

2chicksandapen

Well I’m chasing 100 days of burpees with a plus-one-each-day goal. This is a chipper of sorts. A big mountain of 5000-plus burpees.

As noted before, I said I would provide an update. Here we are: 

I’ve made it from day 1-30 but I also got 35, 36, 38 and 41 while chipping away. I did burpees for breakfast today and bedtime burpees. That was definitely a first but may not be a last.

When I need to accumulate over 20 burpees a day I have to knock out 5-10 where I can. If I’m early for class I drop a few. If I’m stressed at the computer I drop and do five or so. I have a little hand counter that clicks each movement. This allows me to keep a running total for a day. This approach makes it a lot easier for me to find the time for the extra fitness.
What’s crazy is I’m a super busy person but there is so much time in your day that you can squeeze in a few burpees here and there. I haven’t lost interest yet but I’ll check back in here again soon.

As I enter this note, I have now added hotel burpees to my list of firsts. Many times I have said I’m going to do burpees when I travel but never do. This weekend I was in a brand new hotel and decided to go for it. Nothing else to do while I waited on friends so burpees it was. I am seeing my tolerance for number of burpees go up since I started.

Thanksgiving week called for a lot of burpees. Ha just shy of 400 ringing in 394. Holy wow! I could be mad but instead I’m thankful for burpees this year. My ability to keep moving to help offset all the extra calories I consumed. As an added bonus all these burpees have helped me improve my push endurance and quality of movement. A big bonus for me. I also did vacation burpees which is a big win for me. Gone for a week and each day made my efforts count while others slept. 

The half way mark is in the rear view. Hitting 100 days is the goal in sight. Will I make it? Stay tuned…..

challenges

Pretend It’s Normal

2chicksandapen

It’s not quite the end of 2020 and there are about ten thousand phrases I’d like to forget with the new year.

Here are just a few, besides the obvious social distancing:

Abundance of caution – “Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve postponed another event you’ve already planned for / paid for / trained for / committed to indefinitely.”

A little different – “Thanksgiving / the holidays / Disney World / The Peachtree Road Race will look a little different this year, but…”

A year like no other…the list goes on. I want it to stop.

But the one that is like a dagger to my lungs is just the word “normal” in almost any context. Yes, “new normal” is annoying because it implies that this is going to drag on and on forever. But just the word normal is even worse. Especially in my work environment.

“We want it to be like a normal school experience.”

Say what you will about science and politics. What we are going through is not normal. I’m hopeful it’s a once-in-my-lifetime occurrence. Walking around in masks, keeping 6 feet apart, sanitizing a million times a day, kids unable to move as they please or need to, feeling suspicious every time someone sneezes…none of this is normal. Dear bosses…Evaluating how or what I am doing based on “normal” standards is also silly. Thankfully, our state lawmakers came to their senses and made the high-stakes tests high school students take at year end irrelevant to their grades. Take it all as just data, not as a way to penalize kids for situations they didn’t create or choose.

People are doing the best they can. And now more than ever that can be a messy, unpredictable, incomprehensible jumble. Forgive it all. Accept it. This goes for my attitude toward myself, too. Keep going. Lift others up when you can. That’s all I can do.

So when you say you want it to be more normal…I want work (and grocery shopping and traveling and everything else for that matter) to be more like a “normal” experience, too. I wish none of this were happening or that I could wave my magic wand and have it be over. Voila! Normal!

Not that easy. Hopefully we are on the way to a better normal in the near future. But for now, can we please just treat this like the anything-but-normal experience it is?

What pandemic words and phrases make you ragey these days?