Weekend? What Weekend?

This entire weekend was spent getting ready for the room mate. We emptied a closet, actually two and dismantled and rebuilt an office. Serves me right having to work the entire weekend to get it done. I was supposed to have cleaned and decluttered the office during my summer break. But alas, I did not.

So we spent the weekend getting the spare room converted into a short stint bedroom for our much anticipated and very welcome brother in law. It is going to be a super fun 3 months!

We can't wait for him to get here. It is going to be a blast.

But I would like my weekend back. I think I need a weekend to recover from our weekend.

Motivation in a Cowbell!

This is my shiny new cowbell. I earned it today by swimming. In the water. At the gym. This cowbell is really what got me through it. Olivia walked in and announced " I have your cowbell". Those four words were all it took to make me jump into the water and give it my all.

You have to truly know my core dislike of the water to understand the magnitude of the power of the cowbell. When I was two I fell in a river and nearly drown. My mother, who was never much of a swimmer herself saved me. I didn't think it affected me. I took swimming lessons as a kid in school and a few at the local pool over the summers of my youth. But as anyone who has watched kid swimming lessons knows, those are not mad skills and as long as they don't drown, they will most likely pass the lessons. That was when I stopped swimming. My career ended at 12. I'm not actually sure I ever put my whole face in the water. Now here I am at 41 trying to swim again. This is where I learned how fearful I am about the water. I panic, I choke, I feel like I can't breathe. I just want out of the water. I think, that river of so long ago haunts me still.

Today something strange happened. Sure, the lure of the cowbell is what really got me in there. This is my second cowbell and like this one, the first was earned by exercise. That was a 5k though, piece of cake compared to this one. But as I was swimming, well, something that sort of resembles swimming, I began to see the draw of the sport. In the water I felt weightless. The sense of quiet calm (well except for the breathing panic) was just out of reach. But I had a glimpse of it a time or two. It's out there and it makes me wonder if possibly, just possibly is this my sport?

So as I waited for Olivia to go get my well earned cowbell for me, I was shocked and amazed to hear my own voice answer this question she posed as she headed into the locker room...

Olivia: "same time next week?"-(referring to our weekly personal training sessions),

"Yes" I said,

Olivia: "pool or gym?"

"Pool!"

Wow, I said "pool" with out even thinking. There is no cowbell. There is no motivation. Well, except the motivation to get better, and maybe to find the calm, the quiet, the exact opposite of everything else in my days.

I'll let you know next week.

Insane fun!

This is the after picture of the First Friday clan after we finished the Warrior Dash yesterday. I have never in my life been that filthy before. Nor have I ever had that much good clean (oxymornic comment I know) fun. For 48 minutes I was a kid again!

We signed up for this event when we first heard about it in the spring. The idea is a 5k trail run with a bunch of crazy obstacles thrown in for good measure. It's billed as "The craziest frickin' day of your life" and they aren't kidding! The trail run itself would have been challenging enough with some crazy steep climbs and descents, but along the way we got to wade through chest deep 50 degree water and climb over logs, climb cargo nets, scale hay bale pyramid stacks, repel down steep embankments, climb over old cars, weave through crazy yarn mazes, climb a vertical ladder, and army crawl through a mud pit complete with barbed wire to keep you honest and low (ask Sean about that, he lost a bandanna on the poky part!) . Oh yeah and my personal hands down favorite obstacle; fire jumping!



I honestly can't believe I did this event. I never would have thought I'd love it as much as I did. Do I have any regrets? Why yes I do, just one. I regret that I have to wait an entire year before I can do this again!

They run like 5 events across the country. I wonder if I could follow them like a groupie. A Warrior Dash groupie. Yes, I think I've found something to add to my bucket list......

Super Star!

PT today was not pretty. I've become one of those people who are stuck in the past. I work through the exercises with the strength of a grandma with a walker. My pride no longer exists. It was lost long ago. I keep replaying June over and over in my mind. I could run 13 miles then. I can't run 13 blocks now. It's pathetic and so am I at this point. I have become one of "them".

It's a good thing I don't have children or I'd be one of those parents like the one's my co-worker Jason had to deal with last night at our Open House for the new school year. He teaches PE for the 3rd-7th graders. We have PE everyday which is fantastic and will hopefully make a difference in the probably 60% obesity rate I saw in the kids that came to visit last night. But while my families were asking about schedules and materials and generally academically oriented issues, poor Jason had entirely different conversations.

His entire evening was spent listening to the glory days of the parents PE experiences. Or of their HS sports, or even a few in college. No one cares what he is going to be teaching the kids or what they need to be able to do. Nope, they want to talk about the incredible athletic prowess of their youth. How Nike never recruited these folks is a mystery because clearly they were Super Stars. Now they watch sports instead of play sports. They push their kids and talk about how great they were as they drive through McDonalds. They've got six packs alright, well except for the ones who buy it by the case. Yup, those are some Super Stars there.

I don't want to be a Super Star. I don't want my glory days to be in June of 2010. I need to pony up and get with the program. Apparently this involves me getting off the couch and into the pool. ICK. No one, but no one needs to see me in a swimsuit. But after last night combined with this morning's PT, I guess getting into the pool is a better option than upping my ESPN cable package. I wonder how much it costs to put in a private pool.....