Morning everyone!
It's great to see so many people back! Please, if you are lurking out there, come out of the cybershadows and say hello

Now we've got two official "extraordinary peope" on the board! Congratulations Fru and Susan

Yesterday's back workout is making itself felt. Today I'm just doing ardio and light arms. Light arms is all I ever do for arms at this point. With pretty much daily lifting, plus all the indriect armwork I get training others, they don't need much more than about 3 sets of bi and 3 of tri's. Plus, the elbows just won't take it.

Fru and Nelie- Have you got yourselves back on track yet???
Pat- Enjoy your weekend. Those are my guilty pleasures, too. But I end up staying up too ate on Thursday nights.
Lydia- I must have missed something...why are you in PT?
Hi Cindy! Tik- come back out of hiding Hi E of A!

Gotta go-
Mel

A coworker is out for a week to California and has lent me her balance ball to use as an office seat, she thinks it is a great workout for the abs and she may be right, if nothing else, I LOVE bouncing around whiel talking on the phone to people who don't want to hear the answer i am giving them.

Food has been on track for a couple of days, which is inspiring and I am actually having a half cup of nonfat cottage cheese as a midmorning protein, actually quite nice, didn't think I would get here but did. Cabot Farms makes a great one if you are in New England.

Yoga this afternoon after my half day. Wahoo.

Had another good upper body workout today along with thirty minutes of cycling. Today was the gym/swim day for my three year old. I convinced DH to join our son in the class since he was home from work today. Let him stomp around like a dinosaur for a while.

MEL: You haven't really missed anything, I just haven't shared a lot about my injury. Thanks for asking. I began running in March and gave myself a nasty stress fracture. Originally I thought it was muscular and didn't seek treatment for it until uhmmm, July.... Yeah silly I know. I just didn't know what it was or who to go see.

From the diagram the physician showed me it looked like it was in the pubis area but according to the MRI evaluation on my chart they state it is a femoral stress neck SF. Anyway, it just hurts there. I've been told to do no weight bearing exercises. Cycling is just about it. On my whiteboard at home I have a countdown of the number of days I think it will be until I am able to run again. We are down to 54 days. Unfortunately, the closer I get the less optimistic I am. This blasted thing just isn't getting better. If it is, its just REAALLLLLLY SSSSLLLOOOOOWWW. GGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRR. I can actually feel the lack of muscle in my legs since I have not been able to do lower body for three months. You know that nice little rise on the quads? GONE...... It just isn't easy to deal with the limitations of your own healing body.

Anyway, enough of my pity party. At this point, I should just be glad I can walk across the room without a hobble. I've also learned my lesson, CROSSTRAIN like crazy! Running everyday is not a good idea. As soon as I get the green light from my physician to do lunges and squats again, I'm hiring a personal trainer. I'm going to hurt myself again out there if I don't have someone looking over my shoulder.

On the upside of things, I have a sitter for the boys tonight and DH and I have a date! Have a great weekend everyone!!

LOL, Mel. We get all our TV programming on central time, that is what you see at 8, we get a 7, so evening news is at 10 rather than 11pm. I have the "up too late" problem when I'm traveling, but at home I can get to bed about 10 and still have seen my "must see TV."

Susan, really nice article. You've had an amazing life.

Liza, I like cottage cheese and fruit for a snack, but I don't like it icy cold, so I leave it out when I get to work (vs. sticking it in the fridge with my lunch). That also reminds me to have it instead of the cookies and candy that reside in the "have some" area of our break room.

I'm thinking of taking a Pilates DVD home tonight to try over the weekend. We're supposed to have nasty weather (and it's already starting) and I know it'll be difficult to talk myself into going to the gym with DH to accompany me. I have a Kathy Smith weights DVD, and will do that, but I've been interested in trying pilates. Maybe with no one watching and making comments .....

Thank you Pat!!! I was very excited when they interviewed me for that article. I hope to write the book and hire a publicist in the next six months but right now I am trying to apply all my motivational/positive thinking to my workouts. I keep thinking if I did x, y, and z, I can do this!!! But it's HARD.

Lydia, I hear you!!! After working out and getting to a pretty decent place, I was in an accident and could NOT handle the limitations of my healing body...then I was diagnosed with osteoporosis and became afraid of weight training. My body just got softer which was the worst thing!

But when I'm in the gym now I still have to be careful and I hate it. I want to not be so limited but I cannot stress my body more than it can handle. I'm sorry you're healing is going slowly...mine did too...

Mel: your "light" arm day is my arm day! I did an UBWO the other night and I am so weak...I kept checking to see if there was a lighter weight but there wasn't...oh well...

Today is my semi-free day and I know I need it. I know I need to take a day off from training and to eat what I want (I don't go crazy but I basically eat whatever I want). However, I feel like CRAP on this day...always. It's amazing how stark the contrast is...even though I'm tired and sometimes hungry on the other days, I feel GOOD. On my off day, I feel like crap.

Nelie, regroup and get your head in the game, as they say. You have the choice of a) taking off about 10 more pounds and feeling awesome on your special day, or b) taking it easy and wondering what could have been.

Fru, awesome shot! I also saw you in the photo gallery for grading. That's you, right, in the top photo?

Spent the week as a daily commuter to DC and lots of walking between the commuter train and thruout union station. TON of walking. If I could find a pedomter that was accurate and didn't register clicks from bending over or turning around, it could be an interesting exercise to see how much I walk off. 2 hour commute each way, so that was quite a draining week. Food was pretty good, meeting food, but I didn't choose the outright bad stuff. Too many carbs as b'fast was the inevitable fruit & bagels, so I chose fruit.

Muscles are sore so will get back to exercising tomorrow after being off since Tuesday. Just couldn't add the extra cardio time when I was already getting up at 5:45 to catch my trains.

Hi LWL,

Rabbit reporting in. I've just catched (caught??) up with reading last week s posts. I am still woozy from the trip, took me 24 hours one way to taipei, the the return trip was actually worse... took 27 hours. I've decided to stay up tough, to try to beat my jetlag this way.

Still, a week of no excercise, hotel (chinese) food, ...and I made it. I used to do these things more often before the burnout - divorce episode, and I guess I proved that I did it before, and I can do it again. As for no XH around to look after the kids..well, my parents helped me out and it all went OK. I did not stay an extra day to sightsee though, because I wanted to be the minimum time away from the kids. I'm still glad I took the trip as a way of proving that I can still do this, and I can still enjoy a bit of adventure. I could do without the long flights and waiting for connections though!

BTW, Susan and Frus.. I read the webpaged and you ROCK!! Susan, I find your story unbelievable! Nelie also..I can relate to your story of the comments of your mom. You take this really well!

I'm off for a long weekend of rest and relaxation. Back to routine on monday.
Have a great weekend,
Rabbit

Susanje: I just read your story. WOW. You are a remarkable person! I think I will print this story and refer to it when I feel a sense of complacence setting in. You are certainly one of those people who really make a positive difference in the lives of others. Just incredible. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Susanje- You actually did what I spent 20 years talking about, then decided I was too old to do. Your story made me tear up.

Lydia- I see it's POURING on you right now! Dh and I are watching the OSU-Penn State game. Looks pretty wet out there. I think I see my daughter huddled under a red poncho under the score board in the Horseshoe.

I don't know what's with me this weekend. I worked this morning, but haven't done a thing the rest of the day except eat crappy food. This is like my first BFL free day- yuck! Tomorrow is my son's 16th birthday so there is steak and chocolate torte on the horizon- I should be tightening up today and doing about 4 hours of cardio but I don't want to. I just bought some new clothes yesterday and they all fit- at this rate, they won't by Monday Luckily, I go to work in yoga pants and a t-shirt. Actually, that's not always a good thing!

OK, game ought to be back on-

Mel

Mel: We did get drenched. Did you really see your daughter in the shoe? How fun. You just never know who you are going to see when the camera scans the stadium.

My inlaws used to be season ticket holders for the Browns games. One monday evening my dh and FIL went to a game but my MIL stayed home because it was just too cold. She was watching the game of course and saw her ds in the stands doing his crazed barking routine. Her first reaction was "Oh hey there's my son." And then it was "HEY LOOK AT THAT. IT'S MY SON."

It was actually pretty cool. For that whole year the network included his 10 to 15 second shot from that game in the TV ads/trailers for Monday night football. We have it somewhere on VHS if I haven't taped over it with some of the kids stuff...

You must have a birthday season in your family too. (Didn't you just celebrate yours a couple of weeks ago?) August is ours. In just two weeks I have access to over six birthday cakes. It's like Christmas at our house during that month. My plan this year was to do cupcakes. I still have some frozen in the basement as afterschool snacks for my son and his friends. I load them up on sugar and send them home.

Well, two full weeks with my w/t being on plan!!! I forced myself to do Friday's routine by just going in saying I will just do one set of everything so I can't mark it off my calendar. But once I started it felt too good just doing the minimum, so I did the full routine. I amaze myself some days. My mojo, I believe, is being fearful of complacency - hope I keep the fear!

Back on track... er that would be what today's for!

And yes that's me in the grading photo at the top getting my "Student of the Year" award

I'll hop on over to a new thread now...