Positive Energy Activates Constant Elevation



~RZA~

Sunday, November 27, 2011

30 Day Shred Week 1..and Thanksgiving

So I have completed my first week of being on the 30 Day Shred. I did the workout 6 of the 7 days of the week. You are supposed to do it every day but I don’t buy into that. You need at least one day of rest…if you’re me anyways. I did very light mileage as in like 3 mile runs and the other days I did yoga. I didn’t do beginning measurements and I kind of wish I had…maybe I will today…but I can say that my scrubs are looser and I’ve dropped 3 pounds with no real diet modification and Thanksgiving thrown in. So I have 3 more days on level one and then I move to level two. The workout is only 25 minutes but it TUFF! I’ve progressed to using only the 5 pound weights and am pleased so far….will keep updating as we go along.


Thanksgiving-

I think this just may have been my favorite Thanksgiving to date. We ended up with 15 people and it was fantastic! Here’s what was different this year.

-I cooked my turkey in a Nesco…this is amazing and left my oven free for everything else.
-It was my first Thanksgiving as a vegetarian…and it was awesome.
-My ex-husband and his three boys joined us this year…and it was crazy and wonderful.
-I made the pumpkin pies from real pumpkins…not a can. They came from my parents garden.

If every Thanksgiving from here on out was half as good…I’d be thrilled. Usually I end up stressed out and wanting to choke someone by the end…but this year was just right…with the exception of WAY to much food…but better too much then not enough.

Now with Christmas less than a month away I can sort of relax. We leave for New York a week from Wednesday and it will be good to finally put that place in order and be done with it. I don’t suppose I’ll ever go back after this but who knows..I’ve also said I’ll never run another marathon….HA!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

The Prodigal Runner..Sort Of

I hate when I do this…neglect this thing for so long I don’t even know where to begin to catch up. I look at it and think..why don’t you just pitch it…we will call it your ‘blog’ period….and be done….but somehow I just can’t.


New York was trying. Very hard to revert back to a life you haven’t lived in 15 or so years. To be under the same roof as both my parents and my brothers…nothing good can come of that…and nothing good did. I pulled almost 30 giant trash bags of mostly paper while I was there. The man kept everything…very meticulous and most often….not in good ways. Here are a couple of interesting highlights. When I first got there…..I immediately went to his room to strip the bed and flip the mattress so my Dad could lay down. As I was flipping…I noticed a long row of writing on the upper left hand side of the box spring. I went across the bed and saw that he had wrote down every time he flipped the mattress in marker at the top of the bed.

I also discovered similar documentation in other parts of the house. Like during the spur of the moment tag sale we had on Sunday before we left. I moved an antique clock into the bedroom because people kept trying to buy it and discovered multiple pieces of paper under it dating when he would wined it….dating back to the 60’s.

It was sad…and hard…to pitch away this mans life..things that he obviously found important. I did manage to give a pickup truck load of magazines to a steamboat enthusiast and also had the Oyster Bay Historian at the house and he had a wonderful time and took tons of things. And we sold a number of things in the sale that made people VERY happy to find….so there were good points.

The two best parts of the trip where the windmill and the wheelchair races. The windmill..pictured in the post below…was a prize in Johns life from early on. He built it when he was 15 years old…a fully functioning, badass windmill. Now the neighbors behind John have a 41 year old son that lives somewhere on the island and while we were talking with them one evening…they told us how much he had always loved the windmill….since he was a little boy. After talking with my parents…we decided to give it to the guy. We went over…told the parents who in turn called their boy and MADE HIS LIFE. So completely happy…and according to the neighbors to the north of John…who were extremely good to him and whom I have kept in contact with…told us that he came with a flatbed the week after we left and took it to his property. He sent my parents a note of extreme thanks. Good stuff there.

Now for some reason..John had 3 wheelchairs at the house. One we learned belonged to the church…and we returned it. The other two we put in the garage. And on the day we had the sale..Paul and I participated in wheelchair races in the driveway. I kicked his big ripped muscle ass there and back…and although he demanded a rematch after dark on the streets which never ended up happening…it was good…good to play in a sad time.

On the running front…things are going well. I’ve rebuilt my long run back up to 10 miles and have had a few solid ones. After the marathon…I was so completely burnt..most running I did was bad running…except barefoot. Through this fall I have been doing tons of trail running and was seriously considering a series of progressively longer trail runs put on in Illinois. Perfect to get away from normal racing and training. And then Dominic started running with me. And told me he wanted to run the half marathon of the full I ran last May. And I heard angels sing…lol. He ran his first 5 miler last week and I decided he not only could do it…but has both the dedication and heart to do so. Lofty for a 14 year old…but I am thrilled. But this changes my winter plans..because I can’t train with him for a half and do this trail series..no freakin way. So instead……I will train with my son through the winter…do speed training when he’s not with me…..run the half with him…and make Lighthouse 10 miler my A race for the year. Finally bury my hatchet with that damn race. Everyone wins.

So basically I’ve switched from base building for trail runs or running a solid half myself…and switched to Dominic running his first half without injury…and me getting ready to make Lighthouse the bitch she is to me.

I am also on day 2 of Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred. Which is what I’ll do along with running with Dominic until we start training in January. This will be interrupted by another trip to New York in early December to finish emptying out the house and bringing his car back to Wisconsin.

There’s more…boatloads really. But I have my second date with Jillian and 3 or 4 miles with Brian to hammer out. Have a great day everyone and I hope everyone is well.

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