The spring air is calling my name!  

The other day, I had a lightbulb moment: I could just add a rack to my road bike and commute on that!  There’s a bike rack at work, and I think it’s pretty safe, and I can even use multiple locks if I want.  I’ve got a couple of bags with panniers that should work.  I’ll pick up some cleat covers today, too.

I also want to swim again.  Yesterday I bought a bargain Speedo suit at Ross for $17.  I still have my goggles and a new swim cap, which I bought at the end of last summer.  With my Y card in hand, I should be ready to go!

Of course, this doesn’t mean I’ll give up boxing.  It just means I’m looking for more ways to be active outdoors, enjoying the Florida sunshine before it gets too intense.

I’m not going to be perfect.  That’s for sure.  There are going to be weeks (yes, weeks) every once in a while that I miss boxing.  I’m not going to ride everyday, probably.  I’ll aim for it, but heat, rain, and exhaustion might just get in my way.  Swimming and commuting provide the biggest hurtles because they’re new to me this year (though I’ve done both before, so I know what to expect), and they both involve a lot of preparation.  Plus, swimming involves near-nudity, so there’s that.

I’ve also been knitting a lot, and I know that’s not really athletic-themed, but it’s taking up a lot of my free time (in a good way).  I’m looking for more balance, though.  That’s all.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been through a lot in terms of fitness.  Not only have I been boxing it up, but I also participated in a wheelchair rugby fundraiser, picked strawberries (yes, that’s fitness!), and participated in hot yoga, a first.  All of this occurred while my back continued to recover and revolt (wash and repeat).

Wheelchair rugby was awesome, but it was not flattering.  We were all attached to $5000 wheelchairs with big elastic straps that made any fat on our bodies squish either up, down, or both. Then, we made fools out of ourselves trying to turn the chairs right but inadvertently going left, moving backwards, and clanging against others as we tried to make ourselves available for throw-ins and passes.  Ah, but we were great passers!  

Lauren, her husband Adam, their friend Allison, and I played two twenty-minute games back-to-back, and, while we lost both, it was a lot of fun, especially when we played with one of the actual quad rugby players!  Basically, the fundraiser was for a quad rugby team (people who are quadriplegic or paraplegic).  I highly recommend the experience, as I wanted to just get up and run to where the ball was being tossed so many times!  After a while, though, we agreed that we were learning to become one with the chairs.  

This past weekend, after Saturday boxing, Lauren, Diana, and I went strawberry picking!  It was a gorgeous 60-degree day.  This was my first time, and I was surprised to find that we weren’t hitting the wilderness but rather attacking cultivated rows of strawberry plants.  We picked adjacent rows and went for it, learning that, like much in life, the best results were yielded with patients and looking underneath the leaves for what was just waiting to be picked.  My back ached a bit from the bending over and squatting, but it was nothing crazy.  We left feeling satisfied that we’d picked our own snacks for the next couple of days.

Last came hot yoga, on Sunday morning.  I’d practiced yoga before, for about six years, actually, until I was about 23.  Yoga had a big impact on my life in that time when I had gone through a break-up and was living by bouncing home-to-home as a house-sitter for the summer.  When the studio changed locations, for some reason I quit, and that’s when I very seriously took up Spinning.  I’ve done it off and on, usually on my own, since then.

Well, hot yoga involved many of the same moves, just in quicker succession and with less repetition in a 95-degree room with I’d guess about 60 people.  Wow!  I couldn’t look behind me because I get so claustrophobic.  I did well for about half the class, or at least as well as could be expected for someone who’s out of practice and dripping sweat.  But then chair pose twisted to the right and bam! my back was done.  

I was not thrilled.  I sought solace in child’s pose but then thought I’d pass out.  I cried.  I actually cried in yoga, but I don’t think that anyone could tell–even if they were paying attention–because of the sweat.  Perhaps the sweat made me more prone to crying, such as in those sweat tents where people bond and tell the stories about all the horrible things that have happened to them.  Lauren saw me and offered sympathy, telling me to relax.  I breathed.  I told the instructor, eventually, and she was very compassionate.  I sat there, and my right ankle tingled with pain, in addition to the searing pain in my lower back.

In the end, I would try hot yoga again, but only after bringing my practice up first the traditional, cold-air way.  I also now know I need to seek the professional help of a doctor and a massage therapist.  Don’t worry, there will be more to come, even if I need to step out and observe for a while!  I really hope I can keep up with boxing, though, even if it’s a light version.

And that’s it for the past two weeks!  Please send happy muscle fiber thoughts my way, and stay safe while you work out!  Protect yourself, and always lift heavy objects with your legs, not your back.

A. The shower.  This offers immediate cleanliness for any sweat, and you can make as many echoing “cha” noises as you like.

B. Boxing class.  This one might sound obvious, but you need a place and a time when punches are both structured and free-for-all.  I love “showing off” as much as I can to the instructors, slamming the white dots in the middle of mitts and aiming high (towards the fictional opponents head) on bags.

C. In dark alleys.  Just start punching.  See if anyone fucks with you then.

D. At your desk when your co-workers start quoting Dr. Who.

E. In a bar when someone’s picking up your bff.

F.  When you see a spider.

G. When you see a wedding or kissing pic on facebook.

“Swimming is magical.”  That’s what Lauren S. replied when I emailed her with the information that swimming seemed to have miraculously cured my ailing back and hip.

Yes, I’m still referring to my little accident with lifting the bag a few Saturdays back.  I haven’t been to boxing since the Wednesday night I had nothing to do but stretch, which, yes, I realize was good for me.  My focus since then has been rest (yes!) and rehab (boo!).

But rehabbing in the pool was actually fun.  I returned to this particular indoor pool where I hadn’t swum for a couple of years and which, incidentally, was the focus of an essay in my MFA creative nonfiction thesis.  The proverbial memories of swimming before “hot dates” rushed past, as memories often do, and the screams of a baby being dunked in the water brought me back to reality. So did the black stuff on the bottom of the pool.  More motivation to keep my feet off the ground, right?

My swim was slow–don’t get too excited.  I focused on those muscles on my lower left side.  I kicked with the board, swam freestyle, and swam breaststroke.  This lasted for thirty minutes, and during every minute, I thought, why did I stop doing this?  Why did I deprive myself of this?

Now, I have been swimming within the past two years, just not at this particular pool.  Another gym nearby has a beautiful outdoor pool, and, in the summer, a glorious public pool near my house opens up.  The last time I swam was probably in August.  I was discouraged at the time because I felt sluggish.  With the swimming trainers offering advanced lessons to pre-teens next to me, I felt inadequate, too.  At some point, I want swimming lessons to get tips on my form and the most out of my workouts.

But I digress, you see, because now I am boxing.  Well, now I’m resting, but on Monday I’ll be back at boxing.  I just read that too many goals make one stagnant, too.  I have a lot on my plate, though I hate to use that metaphor.  In order to get good at one thing, I feel I need to drop other things.  But is that always true?

For example, football players often take dance classes, I hear.  And part of boxing is weight-lifting and running.  It seems that, to get really good at one thing, one needs to get good at other things as well.

So how does one do that and keep his or her eye on the prize?

And what is the prize?

I think I’ve been reading too much about New Year’s Resolutions and how to keep them.  I’m getting lost in a mountain of goals, being told I have too many.  I don’t know how to prioritize what’s really important to me.  Boxing feels good, but so does swimming, and, theoretically, there’s no reason I can’t swim in the morning and box at night–but if I pledge to do that, and knit, and write, and work, and spend less money, and eat well, will that be too much to handle?

This morning I read a NY Times opinion  piece on motivation called “Be It Resolved.”  Writer John Tierney cited a study  led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago that showed that “the people with the best self-control . . . are the ones who use their willpower less often. . . . [T]hese people set up their lives to minimize temptations.  They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can” (Sunday Review, 6, 1/8/12).

The website stickK.com was recommended as a place where people who really want to get motivated can commit to a goal and set up a contract.  This sounded like negative reinforcement to me, but I have not used the site, so I should not judge.  There, you canT put up money against yourself in case of failure–such as pledging to commit to a cause you do not support if you fail.

Frankly, I’d rather do the opposite, owing my coaches money if I fail (yay, coaches) or somehow raising money for myself for fitness events or gear, using positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.  It’s just harder to figure out how that one would go.

Okay.  Now, who has motivation advice for me?  Swimming advice?  Keeping-it-all-together advice?

I feel like I used to do this, and then met some life changes.  These were mostly positive, like getting a new job, but they were changes to my routine nonetheless.

And then, of course, there’s definitely the possibility that I’m overthinking this. Do, don’t think, right?

Yeah, so I hurt my back.  I’ve actually been avoiding blogging because A) I feel like a wuss and B) what was there to say?  And then I realized that I NEVER run out of things to say.

What happened is this, without blame but with annoyance: I think it started with chores.  F-ing chores.  When I got to boxing class last Saturday, my back was sore from bending over the litter box and carrying laundry and all that normal stuff.  I stretched and got ready for the circuit, which was a surprisingly quick round of thirty-second intervals of squatting, kicking, chain slamming, and the like.  The worst one, though, was when we needed to lift a punching bag (apparently full of sand) up as high as we could (waist-level for me) and then slam it to the ground only to sweep it right back up again.

The idea was to squat every time you picked up the bag.

Did I squat?  Probably in the first round and half of the second.  Then, I got tired.  And while I am one to complain make others aware of my issues so that any later failure has been documented in a previous whine assertion of pain, I did not do so at that time, thinking that I could “work it out” on the bags.

That afternoon, I was in agony.  I rested, taking Monday off from boxing.  I returned Wednesday, the last class before the holidays, with the determination to work but only to the point of pain.  I explained to the glorious instructors that my back hurt, so they suggested I warm up on the bags while the others completed rounds of a circuit.  I made it through one and a half rounds, but I couldn’t take all the twisting.  

For the first time in over a year, despite heat and fatigue and nausea and cramps and knuckle pain, this was the first time I threw in my gloves.

And that must have meant something because I didn’t even get any flack for it.  Instead, I was offered a mat and help with my stretches, which I did for about half an hour.

Then, I volunteered to watch someone in the class’s four-year-old play on the playground nearby.  It had gotten dark, and I could tell the father was in a tough position.  I’m pretty good with kids, and I didn’t mind.  So that’s how I spent boxing on Wednesday night.

Afterward, Lauren and I went out to dinner.  We ate the healthiest food available at a local Mexican restaurant.  We discussed school (it was the last day of her semester) and boxing and holiday parties and Hanukkah.

Afterwards, I had a knitting and bead-stringing lesson with Jill.  Somehow, I’ve become someone multi-faceted.  Somehow, I’ve become more social.  Somehow, I hurt my back.

With that said, folks, Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas.  May your bellies be full and your bodies feel light.  

See you next week, back in the ring.

This means that at last night’s boxing workout, there were three guys and one girl: me.  I love working out with the guys.  No, we don’t gossip and giggle like I do with the girls, and, sure, the guys can get a little dirty with their speech sometimes, but it’s all in good fun.  They’re tall guys and can be intimidating, but they cheer me on like I’m one of them.

I don’t want to give away our secrets (if you’re in Orlando, you should come to a class), but I will offer a little peek.  I kicked butt with the push-ups on the upside-down Bosu (push-ups with the hands on either side of a wobbling half-sphere) thanks to Lauren H., my former trainer.

Now, you know the guys from the Olympics who get on the rings and balance themselves by their hands?  Thats what we had to do with the TRXs (yellow and black straps that hang from a bar and have two handles at the end).  This is one of those upper-body exercises that guys can do but that is extremely difficult for girls.  My arms quivered more than usual, but I made it up there a few times for a few half-seconds.

After a tough upper-body workout, we moved to the bags.  My arms felt like nothing but air.  The bags hardly moved.  When I got to the uppercut and hook bag, which is basically a planet, I gave it my all, trying to get that damn bag to go away.  Unfortunately, it kept coming back, and you don’t want to know the words that ran through my head.

After that came the tough stuff: intervals of nothing but hitting continuously.  When your arms are spaghetti, it’s tough.  I could either be intimidated by the guys who hit the bags so hard the metal structure shook, or I could take a cue from them and hit as hard as I could, which, admittedly, wasn’t as hard as usual.  That happens.

Afterward, I took a trip to the pharmacy.  Remember, I have a chronic illness.  The red lights reading “Drive-Thru Pharmacy” glowed in the darkness, and I listened to the 2011 book review on NPR.  Books used to be my life.  Writing used to be my life.  Four trips to the pharmacy a week following a boxing class was not my life.

Does it define me now?  Of course not.  I’m a collage, a mosaic, a stained-glass window.  I am, and I aspire.

Someone said they were fascinated by me yesterday, and that is the greatest compliment I’ve ever received.

I share it not to brag but to affirm that life is worth living (I know, it’s a cliche, but it’s true) and that we’re all amalgams of the things we think, feel, and do.

Do you fascinate yourself? That’s the real question, I believe.

By the way, it’s my birthday, a day of introspection and reflection. Thanks for sharing it with me.

It’s not the food that’s the problem, of course.  It’s the lack of nutritional value in it all contrasted with the fact that it tastes so good!

This week, I’m looking forward to a quiet dinner out with my boyfriend, an Italian dinner with friends, a birthday party, and a work party.  I want to enjoy each event without worry, but I also don’t want to sabotage my new goals.

And why did I make new goals before the holidays instead of after? For the challenge, of course!

Here’s my proposed guide to getting through the week and subsequent holiday events:

1. Keep up with exercise.  I won’t be able to make Friday’s boxing class, but I can still make Wednesday and Saturday’s, and that counts.  I plan to do some cardio earlier in the day on Friday instead.  Done.

2. Limit my portions of the bad stuff.  I hate to call it bad stuff, but it is, really.  In the past, I’ve done well by heaping up the salad and fruit so that I’m more full and can’t indulge much on the less healthy stuff.  While I’ve certainly been irresponsible about food in the past and recently, I’m not really a gorger.

3. Give it away!  After my party on Saturday, I plan to send slices of cake home with my guests for themselves and their husbands.

4. Make the food you CAN control as healthy as possible.  For my party, I’m serving a big salad, make-your-own pizzas (individual sizes), cake, and some junky snacks.  This way, everyone can choose what works for them.  For the restaurant meals and the office party, I plan to make conscious choices that won’t make me feel guilty.  No matter what I order, it’s likely to be good when ordered at a restaurant (on the scale of healthy to fattening), right?  Well, this may not always prove to be true, but I can dream.

What other tips do you have for me?  Help me, please!

I’m aware that I haven’t posted for a long-ass time. A lot has happened in this past year, much of which I don’t want to share. Let’s keep it to fitness, shall we?

Taking a long break last year due to health issues affected my fitness, as did gaining weight due to lack of training and a medication’s side effects. I felt hopeless, like I was pressing up against a wall that was pressing down, and it was stronger than I was. I gained thirty pounds in three months. Yeah. I also had no money with which to hire my trainer again, so I felt lost.

Then, I realized that, while I MIGHT never reach the same size I was due to the effects of the medication, I could still make myself fit.

Just before having my medical issues (a couple of months), I’d started taking boxing classes with my friend Lauren. She was really into it, and of course I was intimidated. Me, hit that big bag? Me, hit the 230-pound instructor? I laughed and smiled the whole time. I was not fierce, but maybe I was scrappy. I went home sore and tired and proud, and so I went back.

I’ve been boxing an average of two times a week for over a year now. Some times, I get on a run when I go four times a week; other times, I take a two-week break. I do what I can. It’s hard to return after being away, though, and the longer you wait, the more fitness is lost and skill is forgotten.

Maybe you’ll see pictures of me being fierce some time soon! I’ve learned how to hit hard. I’ve learned when to pivot my feet. I’m certainly not perfect (who is?), but this is a great challenge, and I learn more every time I go.

Here’s to the rebirth of a blog!