we’ll all float on okay, and we’ll all float on anyway.

Okay. It has been a while. Basically, I lost my motivation to anything after HURRICANE IRENE (bitch) forced my race that I had been training for intensely for the past FIVE MONTHS to be cancelled. That was something to bounce back from and bounce I…did not. I am pretty much just pulling it back together now, if you want the God’s honest. I struggled a lot with motivation after coming back from the US (where I still did get to spend time with one of my favourite people and where we did wonderful things like meditate by a waterfall, jump recklessly off clicks into brutally ice-cold water, and where I learned to hoola-hoop) and then school started shortly thereafter which I was mentally unprepared for in every way possible. I have had to refocus on the gym and thank god for my training buddy because otherwise, I think I would still be dragging my ass. The next race isn’t until spring time so I will have to find new goals to train for. All in all, I can still be thankful for the journey that the entire training process was because it taught me a lot about myself, built my strength mentally (and, obviously, physically) and so onward I move. School is probably going to kill me – the workload is already suffocating and then I decided to pick up a second job because there’s nothing like going to school full time and working full time for a rollicking good time. That’s that – all I can manage for an update right now.

Getting back in the game.

On Monday, I had a terrible workout. An ugly, unmotivated, regressed five pounds in my shoulder presses because my mind sucked sort of workout. My training partner was amazing about it and gave me all sorts of pep talks, and then tough love, telling me I needed to get my head in the game. That’s my saying. I tell people to get in the game. Get in the game or get out. Well, I could neither get in the game nor could I allow myself to get out of the game. It sucked and I was miserable. The entire workout I could hardly focus. It was not a nice place to be and furthermore, it was confusing/frustrating. WHAT WAS I DOING? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME? I love the gym. It’s my safe place. I love the grunting and exhaustion; it’s gross but I even love the sweat – I actually take a deep inhale when I first walk into the gym. It’s sick, I know. I tried to brush off the bad workout but it followed me around for the rest of the day like an annoying younger sister. I had been mentally unfocused and this got in the way of my performance. When I could focus, when I was trying to pull my head back in, I did well. I even broke my squatting record from last week – I am almost at 150 pounds now, which should have felt good but it didn’t. No matter what I accomplished, it didn’t feel good and then I started accomplishing less. My partner was taking the day off from the gym Tuesday and after such a miserable workout, I wasn’t sure if I should even bother going without him. Well, I did. I decided I needed some alone time with the gym and I needed to reflect on what was happening with me. I decided on a WOD that was strictly speed work since it had been a while since I had done some serious running and I thought it might be nicer to do that. I definitely struggled with the workout. It was a difficult one, yes, but more than that, I noticed my mental ability drifting, slipping. I was appalled with myself, I could barely get it together. The second round had been difficult but I finished it, at the highest range of speed I wanted to, but it seemed like the I was not going to be able to pull out the motivation for the third round. So, I said to myself, cool down and leave. Then I did a double-take. Quitting just like that? Hm. Not good. I decided to stick out another round but I couldn’t get into it. I had a mile run left and scarcely a minute it, I was failing. I stopped a few times, shook my head, tried to refocus and then I said, just make it to forty minutes.  That was seven minutes away. So that is what I did. I was running at the lowest range point of the goals I had set for myself but that is what it took for me to finish. I did finish and I ran 4.45 of the 4.5 miles I was supposed to run. Does that extra bit bother me? A little but what I learned was that I had been focusing too much on the pushing myself and not enough on the joy. The sheer, triumphant joy I get from working out and from experiencing the power and ability of my body. I am a perfectionist by nature and this has some good things about it but mostly it gets in the way. I need to learn balance. Balance, balance, BALANCE! Otherwise, I get in my own way and then I stop accomplishing things altogether, which feels even worse than not going as hard as I thought I could. This is all a learning experiencing. I am always trying to rush through things and skip over the part that actually matters: the journey. I have always been like that, since I was a kid. I always needed to learn more, grow up faster, experience everything, as if the world were going to come up behind me and swallow me whole if I didn’t move fast enough. But that doesn’t leave any room for the actual learning, the process. I need to stop being so hard on myself, stop pushing and rushing, and to learn things genuinely, legitimately. This seems to be an ongoing life lesson of mine and I suspect I am nowhere near finished with it but I think I might be catching on. So, in spite of the fact that I did not push myself as hard as I had wanted to in my workout yesterday, I felt good about it because I listened to myself and I gave myself what I needed in order to finish. That is what strength comes down to. You can only push yourself so hard physically if your mind isn’t willing to follow. I’m back though, back on and back in the game. I just have to remember to keep my mind focused, and well-balanced. Compassion and strength.

getting back in the game.

I kind of let this fall by the wayside for a bit. I guess I got discouraged with the writing, or slacked off, as I am often wont to do. It is time to refocus. I am at a strange place in my life right now where I am changing a lot as a person and also trying to decide what to do with my life. Not long term, but what the next step is going to be. It seems to me that I need to change my jobs right now; I have exhausted the service industry and, equally, it has exhausted me. I need to move on but I can’t seem to make myself focus long enough to figure out what it is that I want.  I owe myself some time in that department because otherwise I am just running this circle of frustration in my life and wondering why nothing is changing. It is because I haven’t actually put any committed energy into anything. How I can expect change without focusing on it is beyond me. I know better than that, I know that to get things done you have to choose to get them done. As my favourite saying goes, get in the game or get out. It all comes down to just making a choice and that is what I need to do.

let’s get down to business here.

It occurred to me the other day while I was rolling around in bed and stomping through the house complaining about wanting to move, to travel somewhere, to get a new job, that I needed to pull it together. I am complaining and complaining but what do I actually want? What am I striving for? It’s time to lay it out so I can make it happen. It  is pretty hard to accomplish anything if you don’t know what you want or have even a plan of attack. It’s time to get serious.

The things I want:

-to bring in a source of income from my writing, be it freelance articles or creative writing that gets published
-to travel
-a nice home; a space I want to be in, that I can accept until I am able to move somewhere
-time with my family

So I need to focus my energy. Even though I am working, I still have three days off a week. I need to dedicate my time properly. One day should be spent working on creative writing projects. The other days should be spent looking for writing gigs and places to send my writing to. Family and travel, I don’t know how to access that yet but I can start putting money aside, to save, even if it isn’t a lot right now. The point is to put the effort there, put the thought out into the universe and the thought into my mind, so I can see myself trying. I started on this journey about six months ago and shortly thereafter I gave up drinking. I did that because I wanted to refocus on my life, to get myself in balance, deal with shit that I had literally been avoiding for over ten years, and to start living up to my potential. It all sounds corny and lame but that’s the truth. I realized I wasn’t the kind of person who could handle drinking, or any substance, and that it took away from me on many levels, leaving me emotionally exhausted and high-strung. I don’t regret my past in any way; I met many of my current friends, my boyfriend, and learned a lot about myself. This is just a new phase in my life, one that doesn’t have room for anything else because I am spending all of my energy trying to move forward and that takes everything I’ve got. Do I miss being able to kick back with a beer? For sure. Instead though, I have had to learn how to have fun outside of drinking and that the person I am still holds up even without alcohol. I am also learning to let go, be less controlling; I have to understand that I do not hold power over anyone but myself. This is a hard lesson to learn. Also, I am not going to get anywhere unless I kick my own ass because no one else can ever make me do anything. So that is where I am now, and my goals are right here in front of me. I am the only one that will ever stand in my way, no matter what obstacles come because obstacles are meant to be taken down, leaped over and pushed past. If I have learned anything from my training, it is that I can always go harder, longer, further than I think I can, I just have to keep pushing.

breathe.

I have been slacking on writing, and not because I don’t have anything to say but because I have been so busy. I have been training like crazy – it is all I seem to do, really, or talk about – and also, people have been visiting non-stop. Having out-of-towners gets exhausting. It’s been almost four weeks and thankfully this is the last round of people for a couple of weeks at least. It is hard to imagine that half of my summer is gone already. I haven’t been doing enough. I have spent all of my time training for the the Spartan Race in August which makes sense and is fine but I really need to learn balance. Granted, as I said earlier, lots of people have been visiting non-stop since I moved at the beginning of July and today is the first day that I have actually had some time to myself but still, balance seems to be the ongoing lesson I am struggling to learn. First of all, I need to understand that, for physical reasons, I need to relax. Yesterday I actually got annoyed with the fact that I had made plans with one of my friends (whom I had not seen in almost a month) to meet up for coffee after my work-out and then ending up having to cut my work-out short because of this. Nevermind the fact that it was the fifth day in a row working out and that I still got a good hour and a half in, I was legitimately annoyed at having to rush out of the gym in the middle of my deadlifts, leaving my training partner with mouth agape, next plate in hand, because I had lost track of time. This being said, I did end up having a great time with her, and then later, another friend who joined us. We sat at the cafe for four hours, as people in Montreal are wont to do, discussing all themes and ideas of life and generally oozing in ultra-hip coolness. Trendiness aside, it was definitely a day I needed for my spirit which is something I need to remember. Even though working out makes my life wonderful and fills me with a great sense of accomplishment, pride and happiness, so do other things, like fine espresso, good friends, shaded patios and good conversation. This is equally crucial to my well-being. I feel like I am beating myself in the head with a blunt object because this whole concept of balance is seriously something I have been trying to grasp for years now, especially since I entered university where I developed the compulsion to overstock my schedule constantly so that, for months at a time, I would literally never have a day off. I feel like I need to reconnect to my life and myself;  I need to spend some more time creating (writing), dedicating energy to my loved ones and my new apartment (that I love!) and know that if I can establish a well-balanced routine, I will be more successful and more in-tune with what I need to do in my life to get it to where I want it. I have an underlying dissatisfaction with my life these days that I can only ignore when I am at the gym but that just isn’t appropriate – it is time to face up, quit acting like a baby (complaining) and re-organize. Balance. It will be my new mantra.

refinishing & relaxing.

It has been a hectic week! I have been wanting to post for a while; my head has been feeling cluttered and certainly, I have been doing some thinking. My family has been here visiting for the past week, both to visit and to paint the apartment that we (my boyfriend and I) just moved into. While in the process of painting, my stepdad discovered that our doors throughout the apartment were made of a beautiful cedar, covered up by many layers of paint. Thus began the scraping process. My stepdad started on one side and then stopped, realizing he hard started something bigger than himself as he did not bring the proper tools with him to complete the door. This left one side of the door scraped clean and more still to do so I then decided to take it upon myself to finish the door. Not only would this give my stepdad and I something to connect with (which is often hard since I live so far from home; our relationship suffers this distance and since I made our first initial years together extremely difficult, this is something I am often seeking to repair), it would also provide an opportunity to learn a new skill. I have recently decided that I need to be a person of many skills, that knowledge IS power etc etc – all of that stuff that everyone always tells you and yet, few people pay attention to. I always found myself saying I wish I could do that and then I realized, I can do that – all I have to do is learn. So I have taken on this new task: refinish the door. It is a somewhat daunting task as I have never done it before, there is much scraping, sanding, varnishing etc to do, but I am ready (and eager) to embrace the process. I found, as I began scraping, that I actually enjoyed the work. It was vigorous and I easily got lost in it. I am excited to see where this goes and see what I can create, with my own hands – something outside of the familiar world of literature. It shouldn’t be so surprising to me that I enjoy it because it falls in the same realm, really, of fitness: I am using the power of my body to see results.

On the topic of fitness my workout buddy gave me a bit of an eye-opener at the beginning of the (last) week. We both had a pretty rough session on Monday – it seemed like both of us, in spite of the fact we had new gains, we not satisfied with the work-out. My own muscles, tired from four days of intensive training in a row, were failing easily. I kept getting frustrated, talking down to myself, feeling like crap and I could tell Jon was feeling the same way. I kept reminding him that he was doing well and had pushed more weight in that session than a) he had ever before and, b) had even since last week. It made me realize that sometimes you just have to stop focusing on the goal ahead of you and take the time to stop and recognize your accomplishments. The truth of the matter is that we both have made extraordinary gains in the past couple of months; I am literally lifting double the amount as before and Jon as well. It is so easy for me to get caught up in pushing harder and doing more because I am such a perfectionist. I have to realize that this is also a part of the journey I am on: learning to overcome perfectionism. The thing is that I will never be perfect and trying to be so takes away from the work that I am doing. There needs to be a balance because it is definitely important to push myself and, to a degree, be hard on myself; otherwise, I will settle and I will not get the satisfaction I love from my workout but also, I need to appreciate myself and my abilities. Let’s be corny here and say, stop for a moment, give yourself that old proverbial pat on the back. Seriously. Anyway, that wasn’t actually the whole span of what I set out to write, concerning the eye-opener, but I guess it falls in the same category – I more just discovered my brain needed to write that when I set out writing. What I intended to discuss was the importance of RELAXATION. Post-workout, Jon and I were discussing when we would meet up for the week and I said that since my parents were visiting, I needed to meet up much earlier in the mornings and could only come for the first half of the week. Jon looked at me as if I were crazy and asked if I was going to work-out all the way until Thursday, even though I hadn’t had a rest day yet. I shrugged and said I had no other choice since I would be going out of town Friday and couldn’t work out Thursday. Jon reminded me that I needed rest, that so many days in a row was clearly exhausting. Obvious point in case: my muscles literally were failing while I was trying to lift weights at reps/weights that should have been well within my ability range. Despite this, I was still trying to insist that I absolutely had to come, no rest, until the point that I left town. Then Jon reminded me of something I said to him last week, that sometimes you just need to take some time off, let your muscles rebuild. True! So, I did just that. I skipped Tuesday, worked out Wednesday, and then I took the rest of the week off. Hard as it was not to feel guilty, I managed. Rest days are extremely important and then, every few months, it is important to take a week off. It actually makes you stronger – it gives your muscles time to adjust, rebuild, and then you come back stronger and more mentally willing to get back in the gym, attack the work-out! There is nothing more in the world I love than hitting the gym hard and leaving with an exhausted body but seriously, know your limitations, listen to your body and allow yourself the gift of a break every once and a while. It does the body and mind some good. Relax. Live a little. Look how this all came around, nice and neatly, full circle – I could practically wrap it up with a bow. Learn to relax, learn to get out there and live a little – take your life beyond the gym, learn a new skill. It is easy (especially for me!) to get caught up in working out, pushing yourself, but believe me, no one wants to be friends with someone who only cares about the gym. Don’t get so obsessed with working out that your body is exhausted, your ability suffers, and your world becomes limited. Life is all about balance and learning so get out there and do it – do it all, do it well!

Wherever you are, be all there! -Jim Elliot

WOD:

w/u:  six minutes jump rope
4 x 800 (7.5 mph/7.8 mph/8.0 mph/8.2 mph) (1:00 min break/45 sec/45 sec/45 sec)
3 sets wall walks, until failure (the workout originally called for 3 sets/10 but I really could not do this)
4 x 800 (7.8 mph/8.0 mph/8.2 mph/8.0 mph except for a 40 second break where I ran for 7.2 mph)(1:00 min break/1:00 min/1:00 min/1:15 min)
3 sets 30 burpees

challenges and choices: the journey we are on.

I got to thinking yesterday how amazing it is, how much my life has changed in the past few months. All of this began because my friend asked me to run the Warrior Dash with her. It seems funny to me now that I was so hesitant about it, thinking there was no way in hell I could handle it; it goes to show how everything truly is mental and often times, the only thing standing in your way is yourself. Now, there is no way I would turn from a challenge like that. The training for this race lead me to also decide to follow a new diet, to which my friend told me about Mark’s Daily Apple. My whole life and attitude has changed because of one small choice I made. I truly believe that when you are on the right path in your life, you can tell. I don’t mean path, as in long-term forever, the choice of the rest of your life; I mean where you need to be for the moment. Things start to click and shift and fall into place and you can look around you, even when things are hard and you’re only really half-breathing, and see that things are okay, that they are somehow working. I don’t necessarily believe in making wrong choices, because I think you will have the chance to once again make the right choice, and your life will balance to wherever you are – the lesson you need to learn will always come back around until you need to learn it – but I do know that some choices will take you to better places than others.

Right now I feel as though I am in a pretty solid place in my life right now. I feel passionate and alive; I feel focused and full of strength. I moving my life into new directions and I am learning how to be confident and sure of myself. I am learning to make choices that are best suited for me, because I spent a long time neglecting myself. I would never change the past, or how I lived my life, because it brought me along a journey where I had the chance to meet and love many amazing people but I know that I did not take the easiest route and, in reflection, I can see the moments in my life where I had the choice to move in another, more positive direction, but I never took it. I ended up where I needed to go now and that is okay, so long as I am here now. I have had many ups and downs and I anticipate that more will come, that is just the nature of learning and living, but for all of those times ahead of me, I will remember where I have come from and know that I, just like everyone else, have the profound strength inside of me to keep on living vibrantly and to connect to all of the electric beauty around me.

the fighting spirit.

WOD – Saturday (taken from the Spartan WOD 30 day challenge – Day 17)

Fartlek’s Run (2-4-6-4-2)

10 minutes w/u
2 minutes hard (I did: 8.0 mph)
1 minute jogging (5.5 mph)
4 minutes hard (8.0 mph)
2 minutes jogging (5.5 mph)
6 minutes hard (8.0 mph – took two ten second breaks)
3 minutes jogging (5.2 mph)
4 minutes hard (7.5 mph)
2 minutes jogging (5.5 mph)
2 minutes hard (7.5 mph)
1 minute jogging (5.5 mph)
10 minutes c/d (I actually did only five minutes c/d)

 

Okay so it has been rough. I scraped the bottom and then I collapsed there for a few minutes. The truth is, I’ve been pushing myself hard. Really hard and even though I feel weak and useless, as if I haven’t lived up to my expectations, I have to remember that I have. My workout on Saturday, following a week of intense work-outs, bled me dry. I am surprised they did not have to carry my weeping body off of the treadmill, although maybe it is a good thing I spared myself that indignity. I guess I felt letdown because I really let my mind get in my way and even though it didn’t stop me from completing the workout, I felt like I failed. When I first looked at this workout, I didn’t think it would be so hard. I don’t know why because I am not actually a runner; I only recently started running for any sort of long distance and I generally cap out at one hour. I enjoy the type of workouts that are more explosive, or body-conditioning through circuit training, with maybe a splash of running tossed in there. So I guess this workout, compiled with the exhaustion I was already feeling, was a bit too much for me and maybe that is what got in my way.  I did complete it though, and even did some weight training for forty minutes afterwards, but I felt a total defeat of mind and I didn’t like it.

HOWEVER, the point of all this is that it is OKAY. There will be weak moments along the way – that is part of the process of building new strength in the mind – and what matters the most is how it is dealt with. I didn’t let it ruin my day, which I sometimes do, but I did recognize that I needed some space alone after that. I needed to spend some time with myself, recuperate and forgive my broken spirit. I went to the gym the next day and I took it easy. I was kind of ashamed but I let it happen because I knew I needed to. The most important thing is to understand and listen to your body. I didn’t want to end up in a place where I was completely unmotivated to continue this level of training so I stuck to heavy lifting on Sunday and then did Moksha yoga this morning, for an hour. I feel better now. I feel reconnected to myself and my goals. I am learning to accept things, even if it is not easy, and I know I will be a better trainer, racer, person in the long run for it.

Know no boundaries; push until fail, and then push harder.

Well, today I had an intense work-out. It has been an interesting experience to take on first, the race I am training for and, second, the Spartan WODS (see: spartanrace.com). It really makes me push myself harder than I ever would have expected possible. I used to think I trained really hard before but now, in retrospect, I recognize that I was just coasting along in my sweet delusion, perfectly convinced and content with my mediocrity in the work out world. Now I actually have people stopping me at the gym all of the time to comment on my workout which feels, admittedly, kind of really cool.

I actually worked out to the point of tears today…and then I worked out for another hour. I almost collapsed and there were so many points during the workout that I wanted to yell and scream at whoever it was who was doing this to me but then I realized I couldn`t because I had chosen this. These are the moments that make my life now. IT IS EXHILARATING. This has also been a humbling experience because, actually, I don`t take defeat very well, nor do I handle any sort of moment where I cannot master the task in front of me brilliantly with the utmost of grace. This is something that comes up again and again, like when I finally had to give in to doing girl push-ups after god knows what round of my circuit and second, I STILL HAVEN`T MASTERED THE POWER CLEAN & PRESS YET (aaaaagghh!). I got really annoyed with the `power clean & press`- well, really, I got annoyed with myself and almost drove myself to tears and then I thought to myself, pull it together. It`s frustrating but, as corny as it sounds (and I can be corny because this is a blog and no one knows me and I am kind of a sentimental sap anyway) there is some value in knowing that I am doing the best I can. It is teaching me patience, patience, patience; I have such a bad habit of trying to master things immediately that I don`t allow for the learning process. It is really kind of dumb and I know it comes from the way I was raised but now it is getting in my way and so it is time to stop.

My goal for the end of the summer: to be able to do pull-ups – plural – on my own. I have been doing them every time I go to the gym – I really hate them – and I am one hundred percent determined to be able to do them by the end of the summer. It`s getting to be a little embarrassing, really. Since the gym is closed tomorrow due to St. Jean Baptiste, I think I will spend most of my time before working doing some writing and letting my muscles relax.

“still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken.”

     Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness

-Ayn Rand

It seems strange to start writing this, as though I haven’t been a writer my entire life, as if it were not my chosen career to reveal all of my thoughts for others to see. The funny thing about being a writer is its vulnerability, because otherwise, I am not a vulnerable person, nor would I generally offer up information of myself without being asked. No one here is asking, though, so things change.
The reason that I have started this blog is because, like millions of others in the world, I have taken on a spiritual quest in my life to discover what exactly I want from my life, how I want to get it, and how I plan on getting there. Four months ago – February 25th, if we’re counting (and believe me, we’re counting!), I decided  to quit drinking. This had been a long-time coming, and sort of unbelievably necessary. At the same time, I decided to run a race (the Warrior Dash) which led to me discovering the Spartan Race although, at last minute, I didn’t end up running that race. Regardless, it started a whole new level of training for me and entirely changed my attitude towards life. I have been a gym rat for many years now but this was something entirely new; the training evolved into a whole new lifestyle, a way to live my life completely. That is where the present finds me – four months sober, 10 pounds lighter, and in the middle of an out and out spiritual spring cleaning. I guess I wanted to start this blog to give myself a space to talk about the things I love most: working out, self-growth, and writing. This blog will be a space for me to explore the choices I have made and continue to make, and my work-outs because, when it comes down to it, my work-outs are the core of the person I am and define the life that I live. It will also be a place for my writing, in all of its forms, wherever I feel I want to take it.  I am currently a Creative Writing Major (as well as a Child Studies Major, but that’s a whole other passion!) and am discovering my own voice in writing.
All of this stuff came about because I chose to quit drinking and I feel like it is important for me to really take part and engage in this process. I can sense myself changing, and I can see myself changing, which means that my life around me is also changing. The fact that I am no longer drinking, and focusing all of my energies (creative, physical, and mental) into working out and writing has changed my relationships with the people around me. In some ways, it has distanced me from a lot of my core group of friends but it has also allowed for me to develop deeper, more intimate relationships and that has been exciting. In so many ways, I have been living in a stupor, really, because my energies were so convoluted and mixed up. Now I feel like I am set free; I am experiencing myself and my life in amplified volume, in vibrant colours and sounds. This is good and bad because things are often overwhelming, especially because I have always been such an emotional person. Some days I am not quite sure what to do with the world around me, that never quits breathing, pulsating, moving, talking – it’s enough to make my head feel crowded and my senses overloaded! Anyway, this is the journey and when I get more organized, and figure out this blogging thing, I will probably have this more separated so I can talk about my writing and working out without it being so divided.