Greetings from Delta flight 945 en route to Albany NY. I haven’t
posted in quite a few days because I’ve been on a trip to Florida for work. We
were staying in a pretty fancy-schmancy hotel near Disney World, the Buena
Vista Palace. I didn’t have any Disney experiences this time around, and that
was just fine with me. I had a fabulous time tooling around Orlando with
friends in in our rented electric-blue mustang convertible.
The rest of the
Floridians thought we were crazy, I’m sure, for putting the top down during the
wintertime, but we didn’t want to waste the opportunity to get some sun and
windswept hair.
Outside of the conference and time with friends, the best
thing that happened on my trip was a visit to Crossfit Kings Point on Friday.
Took some courage on my part to walk through the doors of a completely alien
crossfit. What if all the athletes were out of my league? What if they were
mean to me, or rude? What if they ignored me completely? But of course the
people were awesome and welcoming. Within five minutes many of them knew my
name, and I knew theirs. They asked me questions about my home box. Once we
started hitting the strength portion of the WOD (bench presses), it felt eerily
familiar to Albany Crossfit: there were people shouting my name and encouraging
me, and praising my efforts.
I haven’t bench-pressed in quite a long while—probably six
months. We were hitting a 5x5, and on my last set I attempted 85#. I failed—but
I did hit 2 reps first. 5x75# felt pretty manageable. I probably could have done
5x80#, though who knows?
After we bench-pressed, we all did “Helen” (3 rounds: run
400 meters, 21 KB swings, 12 pull-ups). As soon as I saw that was the WOD of
the day, I started feeling real nervous—I haven’t been running much at all the
past few months. Rowing yes, running no. Plus it was HOT out. Nevertheless, I
knew I could do it, just might take me a while. I scaled down to a 25# KB and
used a green band for pull-ups. Felt funny and old-school to use a band in a
WOD—at Albany Crossfit, we’ve begun subbing ring-rows for pull-ups nearly all
the time.
So I finished last—that made me feel like I was at home too.
Took me 14:15 to finish. It was hard, mostly because of the heat and my asthma
was acting up. But I did it!
How am I feeling? Pretty good—loved seeing my friends from
around the country. Traveling is hell on my back, though. When I left for
Florida a few days ago, I was really feeling like my back was on the mend. Now
as I write this post on the flight home, my back is screaming epithets at me. I’ve
got a tennis ball that I keep rotating among the worst spots in my lower back,
and this makes my confinement to this tiny airplane seat barely bearable. I can’t
wait to get off this plane and onto an ice pack. I am cautiously hopeful that a
good night’s sleep in my own bed might help my back to calm down again.
What did I eat these past few days? Truthfully, I didn’t
write down everything I consumed. I tried to stay within the guidelines of not
eating sugar, and focusing on whole foods whenever possible. I did okay with
that. One of the first stops I made when I arrived was at Whole Foods Market,
where I purchased some hard-boiled eggs, egg salad, cooked quinoa, greek
yogurt, fancy cheese and fruit. Looking back I wish I had bought more veggies,
but I thought those would be more available to me on the fly. I did manage to
eat big salads from Sweet Tomatoes (this salad bar chain that’s real popular in
Florida) twice during the four days down there. Another couple meals were
salads from the hotel restaurant, which I supplemented with the aforementioned
proteins from Whole Foods.
During the day I ate all right, but at night (when people
were congregating in the hotel bar and drinking) all will-power broke down, and
twice I found myself stuffing myself full of crap like fried mozzarella and
chips with salsa and mediocre guacamole. AND of course I had my share of wine
and tequila.
One thing I have become critically aware of during the
90-day challenge is how much the culture surrounding me affects my eating
choices. When I am surrounded by crossfitters, even though I am not following
the paleo diet, I am still making much better eating choices. But in Florida,
surrounded by stressed-out and frenetically-networking pastors, I made quite a
few more questionable nutritional choices. If it hadn't been for the 90-day challenge and my still-ongoing competition with my husband, there is no doubt that I would have ingested lots and lots of sugar. There is nothing like feeling tired and dehydrated to make a person crave ice cream.
I’ll tell you what, I am looking forward to this coming week. I am not really working and can focus my energies on enjoying my time with
my nephews, getting my life organized, cleaning my house, and eating well.
No comments:
Post a Comment