Here there be dragons...

"I'm telling you stories. Trust me." - Winterson

Tony's advice of the day: "Don't smash your face."

They say when you don't know where to start, you should start at the beginning.    So our whole universe was in a hot dense state.  Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started.  Wait.  Too early?   Okay, well fast forward to this morning then...

So those who read this blog with any regularity (thanks btw -- I'm always rather thrilled and amazed that anybody other than my mom and my husband read this ;).  Anyways -- those of you will be aware that I've committed to completing the P90X3 program.  And I discovered very early in that the only way I would actually manage to complete the exercise every day was if I did it first thing in the morning.  If I wait till I get home from work I'm either A, exhausted, or B, have somewhere else to go.  Not the world's best plan.  Alright, so have to work out first thing.

That being said, this morning I knew I was going to have to leave work early.  But work is fairly entertaining at the moment -- by which I mean I'm slightly insanely busy -- and things that need to get done don't end early simply because I want them to.  The nerve.  End result being I needed to go in early.  But well, I'm just not a morning person.  And getting up an extra 45-60 mins early to work out is ridiculous enough.  Adding another hour (which, do the math, means 4:30 am) to get to work early is just not going to happen.   Ever.  Okay well it's Wednesday.  This is good.  The reason this is good is that Wednesday is yoga day -- the only day in which I can potentially have just as effective workout exhausted as fresh.  Usually Chris and I go out for dinner on Wed night, but I deemed that even if I didn't get home till 9 and had just eaten, I could still handle yoga.  

So skipped Tony -- despite the fact that it was one of those days I could really *use* yoga.  After Triometrics and The Warrior, my quads were pretty much on strike when I got up.  But sobeit.  Fast-forward through work which was crazy but productive to the eye clinic which was the reason I had to leave early.  No emergency thankfully, just a scheduled check up.   A little bit of a pain because now it's winter.  So I'm trying to juggle my work bag, my wallet, and my huge puffy winter jacket (cause, well, I don't like cold.  And I deem everything under about 25 - that'd be celsius people - to be cold) on this tiny little seat in an absolutely packed waiting room.  Fun.  

Eventually I make it in and ask the doctor about the fact that my eye is still red, often sore, and the pupil is still dilated (I'm now 2.5 months since finishing dilating drops).   The eye is inflamed and the pupil is squished up against the fake lens.  Awesome.  Fortunately this is apparently a non issue -- back on steroid eye drops and should see noticeable difference within a few days.  Don't have a ton of hope for that re pupil size since it's the same drugs I was on before, but hopefully will help w at least the red eye.

Alright so then the rest of the check-up.  He didn't quite believe the results of my vision test (an assistant of some sort does that earlier) so he had me redo that.  Apparently my vision has actually improved in that eye.  Woohoo!  Now just to put this in perspective, you know the giant E at the top of the eye chart?  Yeah -- that's the one I could read.   I *thought* I could read that one last time too, but it was really clear this time.  And I could see shapes on the second line, but my guess at the letter was wrong.   Okay -- pleasant surprise as that really isn't likely to get better till the oil is removed.  Strong start.  Should've quit while we were ahead.

Yup, turns out there's more scar tissue.  "That shouldn't even be possible with this oil in your eye."  Great.  I am honestly *so* tired of being the exception to everything eye related.   Apparently I'm too young and too healthy so my body is being overly efficient at healing itself.  I honestly never thought young and healthy would have negative consequences when it came to healing.  Especially when I'm feeling particularly old wrt getting back in shape.  Sheesh.  He explained that they would probably need to do surgery to remove it but wanted to consult with the surgeon.

I was not a happy person at that point.  My brain has mostly gotten used to the fact that everything in that eye is blurry.  I hardly notice it now except in low light or if something blocks part of my vision from the good eye (sitting in an audience, if the person in front of me moves slightly, I lose the picture entirely.  One of those things you never think of when your eyes work properly together).  I still have real issues with the lack of peripheral vision.  It's a pretty serious detriment in that I forget I can't see there so I have no idea what's going on beside me.  Not so bad when driving because I'm hyper aware then, but walking down a crowded street, or navigating public transit is a whole lot less fun now.  So thinking that I'm going to have to start all over again now -- when I'm 1/3 of the way through P90X3, and really busy at work, was just not something I wanted to consider.   Not, tbh, that I'd have any choice *sigh*

So the surgeon comes in and looks and deems that while it does need to be surgically removed, it can wait till they do the surgery to remove the oil.  And he wants the oil to stay there for at least another three months.  So barring any changes, we wait till then.   Of course I'm a little concerned in that each of the other times my retina detached, it was the peripheral vision that went first.  Since I no longer have said peripheral vision, I'll have even less warning if it does detach :(

Climb on the train to go home and tbh at this point all the stresses pretty well combined.   Not being able to sell the house, having to relocate every weekend and the resulting inability to get anything accomplished, busy at work, worried about my vision, not able to ride...   Everything all kinda squished into one.  Went home exhausted and headachy and just slightly angry at the world.   When I'm really upset about something and don't have the barn to retreat through, somewhere along the way I learned that exercise was an okay way of rebalancing things.  Never as good as an amazing ride or even just a grooming session with my favourite pony.  But an okay substitute.  

However it needs to be real exercise.  Yoga simply isn't going to cut it.   So I looked ahead during the week.   The Incinerator sounded like it might work.  Technically it's not till Friday, but it does use the pull up bar, and, well, I have this handy-dandy new pull up bar...   So...   I deemed yoga could wait till Friday and did a quick switch.

So this might be my favourite one yet.  Entirely arms/shoulders/back, it's all about pairing sets of exercises to completely exhaust yourself.  Uses weights and a pull up bar -- either of which can use a resistance band instead.  And part of what I really liked is it's quantitative -- you're encouraged to record what weights you're using and how many reps you're doing to compare over future weeks.

Now they tended to alternate between "do 10 reps" and "do as many reps as possible in 30 seconds".   Except I kept forgetting the 10 part and trying to do as many as possible.  Thinking that wasn't the best idea.  And there are a few exercises I'll watch a little more carefully next time just to make sure I have the right grip as the slightest change seems to effect which muscle is worked.   You're supposed to select weights accordingly and certainly the bigger guys were mixing it up on the screen.  But I used my massive  5 lbs weights for all of the exercises ;)   And only two did I find too easy at that -- they can move up to 10 next time (cause, well, those are the only two options I have ;)  I do expect my arms and shoulders will be rather sore tomorrow.  Esp as this is really the first day in the program that's actually focused on them.

As to the pull up bar.  I could get almost half-way to a chin up.  And only an inch or so into a pull up.  Yeah.  Sadly I'm not exaggerating.  And the instruction is "as many as you can with good form in 30 seconds".  Right.  So that would be zero.  Way to set the bar low ;-P   And even my fractional ones I could only do about 5 of.  I see all kinds of opportunities for improvement!   hahaha I do have a resistance band, so depending on the day may hook that to the bar as I suspect may be more successful.  But I'd like to be able to do one.  Just one.  It's been a back-of-the-mind goal since the last gym membership I had...   So we'll see.  Still eight weeks to go.

I have noted that this routine if you don't randomly sub it in for yoga day, is followed by CVX.  That's the weight/aerobics combo.   That's all kinds of cruel.  But potentially effective.  

Anyways, so workout was good from a new exercises point of view, but it didn't have the burn-off-frustration aspect I was looking for.  In hindsight, I should've picked tomorrow's MMX.  Mostly because I'm pretty sure it's all cardio fighting imaginary monsters.  But hey -- wanting to play with my new toy got me off the couch and that's what counts.   However, since I was still a pretty unhappy person, I decided I'd go for a run to the drug store to pick up my perscription.  New lulu lemon pants (hey - my legs and butt are starting to look like they've done some work.  It's fair :) and a big baggy sweatshirt (partially cause I was still in cold and grumpy mode) and out I went.  

The run there, albeit short, was actually really good.  And helped restructure my mood.  Alas, sweatshirts are actually the worst thing ever to work out in.  Not only do you sweat, but the little beads of sweat attach themselves to the inside of the sweat shirt.  Which kicked in as soon as I walked into the heated pharmacy and made for a long cold walk home.  Ugh.   Ah well -- the only real task of the day was accomplished, so that's what counts.  And I got my 10000 steps.  hahaha

For those of you with fitbits -- have you noticed any serious inaccuracies since the latest update?   I'm getting about the same amount of steps I expect, but where it used to often miss flights of stairs I did, now it's giving me ridiculous numbers.  It said I did 211 flights today!  Ummm no.  Although at one point it listed 422, so 211 is certainly more reasonable *g*  And 95 of those were on the walk from my office to the eye clinic.   Have you been to Toronto?  It's flat.  Very flat.  And it's all of about a half-hour walk with a lunch stop.  There's no way I did 95 flights of stairs in half an hour period.  And the new exercise feature which I actually love in theory is a little iffy on what it chooses to record.  But that's okay cause my handy calendar tells me about each day's workout.

Have a super early and super long day tomorrow before trying MMX for the first time.  Might be a challenge.  Or might get yoga subbed in and MMX bumped to Fri where I have a much more normal day :)   Oh so very many options.   We shall see...

0 comments:

Post a Comment