"Week Two" Tuesdays Workout

Tuesday Meal
Recovery meal: 1/2 Peanut butter and Honey Sandwich on 7 grain bread; 'Alternative Energy' function Juice Drink
Bfast: the other half of the 1/2 Peanut butter and Honey Sandwich on 7 grain bread
Lunch: Turkey, Swiss and Sprouts on 7 grain bread with mustard. 1 apple. (and a small bag of sunchips... I know! I needed the crunch. I was a little weak...not really considered 'live food' I think)
Snacks: Handful of almonds, Dried Apricots
Dinner: Again, I was kind of bad... I was hungry! I got the new fire-grilled taco trio at Baja Fresh with black beans and rice... I ate it all...but not the chips! I estimate the meal was about 1000 calories... http://www.bajafresh.com/index.php Holy moly, the chicken one with pineapple... the spicy beef... the shrimp with lime squeezed all over it!

So today was a first. I worked out last night from 7pm to 8pm and then, less than 12 hours later, I awoke to workout at 630am. I have never really done that before and I probably didn't get quite as much sleep as I should have.

So the morning started out fine, I rolled out of bed and after morning prayers, I made my sandwiches for the day. PB and honey for my recovery meal and turkey, sprouts and swiss with an apple for lunch.

I headed to the gym and as I was walking in, Rudy was driving in. Make that another first for me. I don't think I have been early to a morning workout let alone make it there before Rudy. Improvement already!

Okay so today's workout consisted of a warmup run and some KUNG FU! Yes, that's right, my old stomping grounds! It was very cool to learn in a different way and from a different teacher. With Rudy it was very cool, because I got to watch while I did it too. In the past, I am shown it once and then I just keep doing it based on the one time I saw it. And hoping they can catch if my body is doing something wrong through my baggy Kung-Fu wear. It was just fun to finally see rudy do some kung fu moves. He is known as a champion, but until today, I had never gotten to see him move much in a martial way, needless to say, his form and balance are excellent and beautiful. Oh yeah, on an aside, last night, Ryan, one of the guys that works as Frogs showed me a very cool desktop background that he photoshopped of Rudy and Bruce Lee next to each other! It was very cool. I wonder if Rudy got a kick out of it too. If you haven't seen it yet, I bet they will show you the next time you are at the counter. Back to the workout...

One thing that stinks is that my legs are just NOT what they used to be. My horsestances are so high and my balance is pretty bad, probably because I lack leg and core strength/endurance, but it felt great to do. One of the exercises was to go from one end of the parking lot to the other alternating left/right punches while sinking into a horsestance. Then on the way back, we did alternating snapkicks. I think we were supposed to just do straightlegged kicks, but I was snapping. It felt good!

Next was some taichi. My taichi skills are very minimal. I think I learned one small 12 step form three years ago... so this was very cool to do.. it burned!!! Rudy said what I think everyone was thinking. It LOOKS easy, but it's not! One of the girls in our group was like, "I see old people do that in the park everyday!" Yes, we had no idea how 'badass' those old people actually are!

I had a hard time keeping my weight in the right place and holding my stances, but like I said, it felt good to do it again. CHALLENGING! He did a few moves I had never even heard of... "poor man's bicycle"? That was one of the moves that I actually lost my balance on. Everyone else seemed to be doing great. If I saw right, I was one of the only people who had to hop around to maintain balance. I look forward to learning more and building from there so I can keep doing taichi until I am one of those old people in the park :)

So after our first Gung Fu lesson, we had about 15 minutes left... so we ran. We ran and ran until Rudy would call us out to do our sprint up the Trail of Tears and down again. I partnered up with Sydney. We met on the first day and just had some good conversation last night and again that morning. So it was good to have her as my partner. We encouraged each other by laughing a little. We were both in the same place, first time for a night to day back to back workout with about four hours of sleep in between but we decided to cheer and laugh instead when we might have wanted to groan and swear. hahaha You do what you gotta do! She even once said, "I could do this all day!" So we booked it up the mountain and on the way down, it was very cool to have Rudy there to give us a high five.

I went to work. Mostly sat at my desk as always, except for a few restroom breaks and fedex mailings or other errands. After, I met up with my sister for our Salsa Class in la Jolla. That was a great way to get moving. I look forward to gong Thursday night for my first belly dancing class. I think I need the dancing to balance me out. We go hard all week, kinda 'running with the boys' and dance might help give me so grace so I don't get all 'tough'. Actually, I noticed my Salsa has gotten a little 'rough' around the edges, it took me a bit to get my dance back on. I can't explain it...

So have I made any physical progress? My dad wrote me and said when he saw me at church on Sunday, I didn't look as 'bloated' and lookd happier. That was good news :) and tonight my sister said I looked slimmer. Yeay!

Tomorrow is a non-Rudy workout day, but I will do my ten minutes in the am and 30 when I get off work. I might work on my old kung fu kicks in sets of ten in the am and then maybe take my mom to the mall so we can walk around for awhile. She and my Sis are also changing the way they eat and move during the day and they are making significant strides.