gwennefarrell

This week I changed out my running shoes. I decided the best way to break them in would be to wear a pair the first day which would involve 2 good walks. The following day would be my interval training followed by another walk. I did that Mon/Tues with the first pair and then yesterday and today with the 2nd pair. I have to say that seemed to have worked well because both pair feel pretty comfortable. The old pairs I am now using for my ‘walking around’ shoes which is ok as they still have some wear left.

I decided it is time to up the ante and get back to the full routine I was doing a year ago. That has meant adding back in all my weight and core exercises. I have gone back to doing my ski-squats which I know helps with my weak hip flexor muscle in my bad leg. I then move on to weights to tone up my arms. I admit my arms are still pretty buff but they do need work. Finally it is the floor work where I do ab exercises along with bridges to help strengthen my core. I had found that I was simply running out of time to do these during the day so they fell by the wayside. However, since I am really not doing anything in the evenings right now I have discovered that after dinner is a perfect time to get in a 1/2 hour workout. Seems to be working so far and my goal is doing these exercises at least 5 days a week.

I also realized that I had stopped tracking some pretty important health issues and now is a good time to start doing it again. I am supposed to check my glucose levels once a week. However, for the past little while I was lucky if I got around to doing it every 2 weeks. I committed a couple weeks ago to get back into the routine and since I have been negligent with this and because my test strips are expiring soon I decided I would check every day. I am happy to report that my glucose has been within normal range every single test. As well, I had stopped measuring my blood pressure regularly so this week I have gone back to checking it every day. Again, so far every check has been normal (actually surprisingly good results) and so obviously everything I am doing right now is working.

The more I get back into my ultra-fitness routine the more I am realizing how much I have missed doing it. All I need is to see those good test results and that alone is keeping me motivated.

Ok, I have to admit I might be wrong. In my last blog I said that my sleep had not improved while doing Dry February. Then I realized, I had 2 consecutive nights where my sleep score was good. So you understand, this is unheard of for me. Occasionally it will register as good, usually it is poor or fair. Not sure if it is really the no alcohol thing or that I have a new pillow mist with citrus and lavender which is supposed to help you sleep. Whatever it is, it also might be part of the solution.

I woke up yesterday and as always synced my Fitbit with the iPhone app to check my sleep score, readiness score and resting heart rate. Unfortunately, the Fitbit didn’t want to sync. After several attempts it did sync but the only info it gave me was calories burned so far, no other info, not any of the things I need to keep me on course. I tried again once I had done my workout and still nothing. No steps, no distance, no zone minutes, no heart rate tracker. What????? I tried everything they recommended to fix this including rebooting the phone, disabling and enabling bluetooth, updating my IOS absolutely nothing worked. I finally did a live chat with Fitbit to find out they are having massive system issues and they asked that I be patient until they could get things resolved. My anxiety started to skyrocket.

I have written before about the fact that I am obsessed with my Fitbit. This is especially important when I am training. I need to monitor things like my heart rate, distance, steps, readiness. These, to me, are all an important part of my training matrix. That info often motivates me to push but also tells me when to back off a bit. The past 2 days (because it is still not working) have been extremely frustrating for me as it has created a huge hole in the analysis I feel compelled to do each day.

Alright, time for a deep breath, I will get through this. I have logged on online though that only gives me some summary information and lacks the sleep, readiness and resting heart rate information that I long to see. However, it is going to have to do for right now as I ‘patiently’ wait for the system to be fixes.

Here’s hoping I will survive.

So I am officially on day 4 of the Canadian Cancer Society’s Dry February (in reality I started Jan 30th) and it is going well. I’ve done this several times in the past but it is at times it was a bit of a struggle with things like social engagements, Super Bowl, etc. This time though it is not just me and my sister participating but also my husband. I admit I do feel better for not drinking and I believe it is helping my training. One of the things I have done this year is downloaded their daily tracker which is just a picture of a wine glass with sections indicating 28 days. Each day you colour in that section until you hit day 28 and the wine glass is full. I am using a burgundy marker so it looks like red wine. I will note, while I feel great the whole sleep better thing does not happen for me. What does though is my resting heart rate is much lower.

The other day I had a look at the treads on my runners and realized it is time to change up to new ones. Normally they should last about 6 months but because I alternate a pair each day I get a year out of them. Fortunately before my husband retired last year I had him stop at a New Balance clearance centre in the States and pick me up a couple pair. Even with exchange I stilled saved about 25% compared to up here. Regardless, they are expensive which means I use them only for walking/running and not for general day to day outdoor activities. That helps them last as long as possible.

I wear really good, supportive runners because I am very cognizant of my feet and taking care of them. Yes, I probably have less to worry about than most diabetics because my glucose levels are so under control but I know because of my brother how quickly things can go south (and hence why he is now an amputee). Because of that I take care of my feet. The first step for me is having good running shoes and replacing them as soon as they have noticeable wear. I always wear compression socks when I am running/walking to help the circulation in my feet, another problem often experienced by diabetics. I never workout without my toe sock (a rubber sleeve that goes over one of my toes) to avoid developing another corn because those suckers are painful. I also ensure every time I shower or swim that I dry my feet well especially between my toes. I avoid wandering around in bare feet to protect myself from inadvertently stepping on something and causing a puncture (ok, that one might be a bit of paranoia but that is how my brother ended up losing his leg). Finally, I inspect my feet regularly looking for any sort of sore or even callus that might be an issue.

When you push your feet as much as I do it is imperative that you take care of them. Putting a little effort in upfront prevents issues and injuries going forward. I also have my feet checked by a podiatrist annually. And while this is more about vanity, I have a pedicure every couple months which means someone else checking for anything I might have missed. On this point I will note, I had runner’s toe on one of my big toes which is when from beating your toes up running the toe nail turns black and in my case it eventually fell off. That’s when I learned my pedicure lady could actually build me an artificial toe nail which looked exactly like a normal nail.

So do yourself a favour, take care of your feet. It is so worth it in the end.

Today was one of my 3 training days this week. I realized that since I really hadn’t been doing this in a while I needed to get my head wrapped around going back to the basics. That means I once again having to focus on what had become natural before. This includes relaxing my shoulders, tucking in my butt, holding my abs strong and keeping my gate equal. I know soon it will be back to my not having to think about it but right now I need to keep all of this in mind especially on training days.

For the 2nd time this week I put in an hour of cardio. It is hard and by time I am done I am just covered in sweat. But that’s ok, I am determined to get back to peak form. However, I am finding I am back to where I was when I started training 2 years ago and I need to get my head back in the game. Now I need to be clear, what I am doing is hard but really no harder than running a 1/2 marathon. Having said that, those voices in my head that I have often talked about are back trying to convince me that if I get to a certain point in the workout then I can tone it back because I can’t do this. I am working hard at turning down that noise and focusing on the end goal but it isn’t easy especially at the beginning of the workout.

What I am finding is if I get to the 1/4 point it stops feeling like I am slogging uphill. By time I hit the 1/2 way mark I recognize I am just too committed to stop now. At the 3/4 way point I am almost done and know I can do this. I admit, I am back to chanting mantras in my head to encourage myself to just push through it. And, those mantras help to mute the noise telling me to scale back. I haven’t forgotten those mantras from 2 years ago when I wasn’t even training this hard but they work just as well.

There is one thing new that is helping to keep me from focusing on the negative noise, a TV. I noted previously that I find using the treadmill to be incredibly boring. In the past I had a stand for my iPad so that I could watch something while working out. However, I now have a big screen tv set up in the garage (thanks to my husband) that doesn’t require me to be wearing ear buds or headphones which is awesome. It also distracts me so that I am not staring at the timer obsessing about how much time I have left in the interval or the overall workout. I give my husband kudos for this as it has been a game changer.

So I am going to continue to push through it, to really challenge myself, to get to my goal. It is why I write this blog, to help keep myself accountable to what I have said I can do.

Exactly 1 week ago today I was at a beach in Playa del Carmen. It was a beautiful sunny day and with the humidity it was about 33 degrees Celsius. Yesterday here at home it was cold, it never warmed up past 1 degree Celsius but at least it was sunny. Today I woke up to -2 degrees and it was snowing! This is simply not fair as I needed more time to adjust to winter weather. Fortunately, this is only supposed to last through today before changing to rain and warming up again. I so want to go back to Mexico!

I committed to myself that once I returned from Mexico it was time to make some significant changes. I had let my running lag a little after I injured my ankle in October, I was not eating as well as I should have and well, there was more wine being consumed than there should have been. Now don’t get me wrong, I have never stopped doing workouts, maybe just not to the level I should have been. All of this resulted in continued weight gain (note, I no longer blame all of this on my husband as quite frankly I let it happen). But I know this is not where I want to be so I decided that as of yesterday it is once again to start the hard work and get myself back to top form. It was time for some big changes.

Yesterday I started Dry February which is a fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society (yes, I know it was only January 30th but it was Monday and I like to make a new start on Mondays). This means for the month of February I will not consume any alcohol. Normally, I would put in an extra donation to buy a cheat day but I have decided that even for Superbowl this year I am going to stick to it (though you can now get some awesome non-alcoholic craft beers and I may partake in a few of those). I have done Dry February several years in the past but this year I think it is an important kickstart to getting back to my goals.

Next is changing my diet. Once again I am trying to eat less carbs and even then only healthy carbs. As well, there will be no snacking between meals and no calories taken in after dinner until breakfast (my version of intermittent fasting). I actually don’t mind the diet change, I know I can do it as long as I remain focused and determined.

Finally it is back to harder workouts. I want to be back at doing at least 10km runs within a few months. To do this I need to train harder than I have been lately. I don’t need to start at as limited a level that I did when I first started running because I have still kept doing a lot of walking and did some training while in Mexico but I also know I am not quite in shape to do a serious run. And so this morning I started my first of three training sessions for this week. Yes, during the first 2 intervals I was absolutely hearing that voice in my head tell me to just do a walk but I kept going and I was pretty proud when I was done. Tomorrow I will tone it down back to a walk and then I’ll do training again on Thursday and Saturday. I have to admit I am kind of looking forward to my first full run in quite awhile but I will still try to take it slow in order to get there.

So why do I think this is going to work now when I said months ago I needed to get myself fully back on track? Well, I had 4 weeks in Mexico which allowed for some self-reflection. I had a decision to make, would I be content going forward to stay where I am right now or do I want to be back at peak form? It didn’t take me long to determine it could only be peak form. I have 3 months until I return to Mexico and I am determined to be comfortably back in my 2 piece swimsuit by then.

Yep, big changes but I know I have got this.

I’m excited because my husband and I are finally getting to do our Christmas date at our favourite restaurant. We had planned on doing it on Dec 23rd but that was when we were dealing with the cold weather and the horrible freezing rain that made our roads to be like skating rinks. We wisely opted at that time to delay our date until we returned from Mexico. He did suggest when I proposed doing the dinner tonight that we hold off until Valentine’s Day however, I reminded him that we are doing Dry February so if we wait until Feb 14th there won’t be any wine with dinner. He agreed tonight was a better idea.

Now that we have been home a few days I have started getting back into my routine. Now I was pretty good in Mexico in that I worked out at on average 5 days a week. Having said that, it was nowhere near the amount I normally do at home. Yes, I got in 10k steps most days which included, when necessary, doing a walk around the neighbourhood later in the afternoon to get them all in. If I go back and look at my history on my Fitbit for the time I was in Mexico I often walked more than 10k steps in a day though still not the 20k goal that I have been trying to keep.

So yesterday I hit the treadmill for 2 hour long walks at a pretty good speed. However, that only gets me to about 15k steps and I wanted to get in more. I was going out last night with my husband and brother and thought you know what, I’m going to walk and meet them there. I didn’t quite hit 20k steps but I was close. Today, despite the fact that I have been working a good part of the day I still got in a couple of good walks. I know next week I will likely meet my daily goal because I will be back to walking a senior’s dog Mon – Fri. Yes, back to my routine.

And I have also started adjusting my eating habits. I know I am going out for dinner tonight and that likely will mean extra carbs. I was looking in our fridge trying to determine what I should have for lunch and I realized the best plan would be to have some leftover salad to keep my carbs as low as possible so that I can have a nice dinner without doing too much damage.

Apparently my head is fully back in the game. Let’s see how well I do next week.

It was a very long trip home yesterday. In order to save money we had opted to skip the direct flights and instead travel from Cancun to Mexico City and then after a 2 hour layover on to Vancouver. That meant by time we got our luggage and did the 45 minute cab ride home that we didn’t get here until 11:30pm BC time (which would be about 2:30am Playa del Carmen time). Of course upon entering the house the dogs went absolutely nuts (today the corgi won’t let my husband out of her sight). For me I am never able to just arrive home and go straight to sleep (my husband definitely has that skill set) so by time I felt I had wound down enough to give sleep a try it was now 1:00am BC time.

I had already decided that I was going to need a recovery day and I was really glad I made that decision. I was wide awake by 4:30am this morning but didn’t want to get up as my husband was sound asleep and I didn’t want to disturb him. Instead I laid in bed until finally giving up at 6:30am. Funny, my getting up did not in anyway disturb him and it was quite awhile longer before arose from bed. I will admit, I was beat. That was a long day of traveling followed by very little sleep and I admit my body ached. No guilt at recognizing this was likely to happen, just focusing today on catching up on all of our administrative things that needed to be done.

But there is a plan. I have already committed to doing Dry February and have decided to actually start on Monday. That will give me a great opportunity to work on my training and get myself back to where I really want to be. I’m already imagining getting off the treadmill and hitting the outdoors again (after this next artic vortex rolls in this weekend). Let’s see where this next month takes me, hopefully back on the right path for my journey.

Today is our last full day at the condo in Playa del Carmen as tomorrow we spend most of the day traveling (we opted for a cheaper flight so it is not direct to Vancouver). It is 10am here and already we have washed the bed linens and then the towels, did a deep clean of the kitchen and bathrooms and as I type this my husband is giving the floors a good wash. All of this is so that we can go out for the rest of the day knowing we don’t have to do anything but pack tomorrow.

This has been our best trip to date to the condo. I admit, this is also the longest trip we have done down here, 4 weeks, and I get the feeling that going forward the trips will just get longer. One of the things we did this time is try and make this more normalized as if we were at home as opposed to us being on vacation. This time I kept to a much better workout schedule, we only ate out occasionally and we built our social network. I even managed to get some work done while we were here (ok, maybe not as much as I would have liked) and I know going forward my office here is pretty much as equipped as my one at home.

To celebrate our last day here we are going to a public beach. Even this is a change from what we normally do. Usually when we are here we go to the beach but we pay to be at a beach club which are popular here. We have only done that once this trip and we made sure that we are prepared for the public beach. That means we have a sun tent, good folding chairs, a folding table and even some insulated knapsacks for food and beverages. The more we do things like this the more this just feels like home to us. And quite frankly, it is way less expensive than doing the beach club scene.

As our trip comes to an end we thank all of our friends here for looking after us. As we don’t have a vehicle here we rely on the kindness of our friends who check in if they are going shopping or heading into town to see if we need anything want to come with them. We have also had some excellent dinner parties and cut throat games of dominoes. Yes, it is just like being at home.

So we say goodbye to our condo, only 3 months and we’ll be back again to enjoy the sun.

Another day here in paradise with just about perfect weather. Sadly we are winding down as we only have 4 more days until our trip home. One of the things I have noticed is being here is now normalized to what we do at home. For example, after my walk this morning I put some laundry on. Meanwhile, as I am typing this, my husband is vacuuming the condo (note, despite the tile floors the best thing I purchased for here is the vacuum). This is what we would be doing at home on a Saturday. We have really stopped thinking about this as a vacation but rather it is our 3rd home (the 2nd of course being the trailer).

I was struggling a bit with what I should write about today simply because my brain tends to work slower when I am in Mexico (you know, manana speed). And then it hit me, the incredible power of friends. This week in particular it has become so very clear. The other day my brother went to the ER (again) because he thought he had a really bad cold but he was very lightheaded. The last time that happened to him he ended up with an antibiotic resistant virus which eventually led to a heart attack and about 4 weeks in the hospital so this time he took the lightheadedness seriously. My sister happened to run into a neighbour as she was coming home by taxi after getting our brother’s antibiotics and after explaining what was going on and him knowing my husband and I are away he immediately told her if she needs anything picked up to call him and he will do it (thus minimizing taxi expenses). He did this not to be neighbourly but because he is a good friend.

I have posted before about my journey not just involving physical fitness but also mental fitness. I have taken myself from a very dark place to enjoying life. I recognize that a big part of that has been because of some awesome friends. I don’t have a lot of friends but the ones I have are wonderful. I have one friend who always knows when I need a quick call. I have my neighbour friends who reach out all the time. What I didn’t realize is that we would develop the same type of friends here in Mexico.

The other night we had an impromptu dinner party with a couple we have become very close to. This then led to another couple dropping in as the 6 of us played dominoes for hours. While all of this was going on they let it slip that they were planning a bit of a get together for us today. We were a little surprised by this but they told us that they knew it was our last weekend here for a while so they thought they would do a send off for us. My husband and I were humbled by this, we didn’t expect that they would do something so kind for us. I realized that that is probably why it does feel like home here, we have forged amazing friendships with our neighbours and is simply going to make us want to spend more time here.

Never take for granted the power of friendship. Cherish it, return it without thinking about it, use it to build yourself and to share with others.

I’ve been doing quite well while here at the condo. I have done at least 5 days of workouts each week and I’m pretty proud of that given other times I have come here I run out of steam after the first week. I’ve mentioned before that I find running down here challenging particularly due to the humidity so instead of running for at least 5k I do it as intervals. I have successfully been doing 3 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking which gets me to about 6k in an hour. I don’t do it everyday because I recognize I need to let my muscles recover (again, I find they have to work harder down here) so on days like today when my Fitbit tells me my readiness score is 13/100 I do a brisk walk for an hour. Today was one of those days and I was happy to just do a walk as it is really humid today. Still have to do another walk to make sure I get in my 10,000 steps but fortunately it won’t be a very long walk.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I go through bouts of insomnia. It tends to be almost cyclical where I can go for about a week of little sleep and then it will be several days of relatively deep sleep. This has been going on for years now and yes, I have tried many things to make it better from melatonin to sleeping pills. I even spray my pillows and sheets with lavender which is supposed to help. I don’t drink a lot of caffeine and never after noon on any given day. This over the past year seems to have been helping (though I gave up on the sleeping pills as they never worked) and I even brought some lavender spray to the condo.

Normally at the condo I sleep fairly well. This is probably because I am more relaxed as there is little stress here. I admit I have been doing some work while I have been here but not a lot. I have been enjoying time with my husband and our friends, meeting all sorts of new pet friends and just relaxing. Yet somehow the insomnia has found me down here. Truly I don’t know why as nothing has really changed but this week I have only gotten a few hours of sleep each night.

I do everything the say such as keep the bedroom cool (or as my husband says, meat locker temperature), spray my lavender, don’t look at any blue screens within a 1/2 hour of going to sleep, at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day (really 30 minutes would be an off day for me) and keeping caffeine to a minimum but to no avail. This morning I actually pushed the snooze button several times because I was so exhausted.

I’ve decided that if the manic insomnia cycle somehow breaks tonight I will give up the workout tomorrow and just sleep in. I know my husband will laugh when he reads this as I don’t really sleep in but I’m going to try. Maybe I just won’t set my alarm tonight and see what happens. All I know is, I need sleep.