500 workout

So that I don't forget, I'm going to start posting some of my sessions with Sam.

When he first said "we're doing the 500 today" I laughed to myself and thought "poor thing means the 300". But no, he meant exactly what he said.

Lunges x 50
Squats x 50
Pushups x 50
Hurdle jumps x 50
Bicep curls x 50
Rows x 50
Shuttle runs x 50
Bridges (one leg) x 25 each leg
Burpees x 50
Tricep dips x 50

There was NO way I could do this as it's written. Sam kindly gave me permission to mix it up a bit if I couldn't do a straight 50. Lunges and squats were easy. Pushups were tough. Got to 20 and fell down. Swapped between hurdle jumps, bicep curls and pushups for the next 130. Rows and shuttle runs were swapped (25, 25, 25, 25), then the bridges were done in one go. The burpees and tricep dips were swapped as well (25, 25, 25, 25).

Brutal but damn effective. I probably wouldn't be busting this out again in a hurry - the soreness today is pretty bad. Why the hell does my ribcage hurt???

Today is a rest day, and tomorrow I'm going to try one of the NF workouts.

How to survive glandular fever

I'd like to publicly announce that I've officially flipped the bird to glandular. Life will go on exactly as before, but I'll cut things out in a very selective way. If I have less energy, then I need to make sure I'm not wasting it doing things I don't want to do.

Yesterday morning Sam came over and we did a 500 workout. That's 50 reps of 10 different exercises. It destroyed me, but in a normal kind of way.Yes, I'm tired all the time. Yes, I'd like to spend my weekend snoozing on the couch. Yes, it took a monumental amount of willpower to get up this morning. But I know the difference between not wanting to do something and not being able to. I'm perfectly able. When I'm not, THEN I'll stay in bed.

Sam peered at me yesterday, frowned and told me that I've lost weight. Not eating will do that to you. I am trying really hard to eat more, but I just don't feel like it. I need some structure to get through this properly.

So here's the plan:

Eating:
I've started measuring out my food in cups so that I don't just pick at my meals. I have to make a real effort to finish the entire plate. It's not a huge amount of food, much less than usual, but it's enough that I wont become a stick figure. You can't possibly get better if you don't fuel your body, and you can't train if you don't have any energy. I've also started thinking about easy-eating food. Stuff you can eat with a spoon or spear with a fork rather than having to carve with a knife. Soups, roast vegetables, salads and fruit.

Exercise:
I'm not giving this up. I'll just have to be really careful.
Yesterday was far too much. I am wiped out. It's going to be a long slog of testing out what is and isn't reasonable. I don't want to slack off and use glandular as an excuse, but at the same time I want to ensure I get better. That means listening to my body when it says 'too tired'. The short 20 minute body weight workouts should be fine. I'd like to keep up with the interval training, and I am really determined to start boxing again. When I exercise it feels like I'm moving through mud. But getting healthy is pretty much my number one priority, and I know that sleep and mood and energy are all tied to how often I work out.

Prioritise:
Thesis, short course, working out, food, family, house renovations, friends, hobbies, drama-makers and work. That's normal life for me. I figure that my energy is cut in half (at best), so I can either do things at half pace or I can cull. I'm not keen on doing a crap job on things, because how can I take pride in what I do if I don't do things well?

• I've dropped out of the short course. It's a blow because I was enjoying it, but realistically, it was unnecessary. I'm going to keep pottering away at the thesis, but I'm going to do a very small word-target every night at home rather than at work.
  
• Drama-makers were the next thing to go. I put up with a lot of people who are passive aggressive and/or refuse to take responsibility for their own lives (work is full of them). I quite like some of these people but I think I need to stop caring. So I'm going to flat out ignore the dreadful ones, and simply say 'no' to the others.
  
• Friends are an easy one. They are like my thesis, non-negotiable. They crack me up and if I'm too tired to hang out I can say so. Besides, even if they tire you out, if you remove the nice things, you're left with glandular and a crap life.

Determined to be better in three months or less. Here's to December.

Brave enough to use an oven

I've been baking! I think Hawm is psychically influencing me.

First I made a huge chicken, leek and bacon pie. It was AMAZING. It's pretty hard to mess up pie, but this really was a winner. Unfortunately I was using the Miss A cooking system, so I can't replicate the pie because I have no idea how much of what I put in.

Then I made gingerbread men. Miss M gave me some lovely cookie cutters - men with bites taken out of them. I was a tad nervous since I've only eaten gingerbread three times, but they went really well. I had a lot of problems rolling the dough out to the same thickness, and it was really sticky and kept clinging to the baking paper. I used more flour but I'm pretty sure my problems would have been solved if I'd used measuring cups. I know full well that I can't judge how much half a cup is. No clue.

I feel like after all the baking (and eating), I should write a bit about this morning. I had a lovely session with Sam. For the first half we did the usual running and body weight stuff. Then he made me do real weights for ages before the boxing in the hope that I'd tire my arms out a bit. It's actually very cute, he gets frustrated because I punch too hard. Who would have thought I'd finally find my sport and it would be something so feral. From ballet to boxing.

Anyway, despite the arm work, we did 400 quick and hard punches in a row. Jabs and uppercuts - I've never done that many in one go before. Almost killed me. Plus, he kept yelling at me, telling me to concentrate and lift my arms higher. Then we did some random combinations he thought up. That was fun until I came close to punching him (by accident - I wasn't concentrating).

Then I wrote a lit review and got caught dancing around the lounge room, brandishing a mixing bowl, to Big Audio Dynamite. All in all, it was an excellent day.