Merry Christmas

Week 9 complete!   Brutal, but complete.   Yes, even on Christmas eve, Christmas day, AND boxing day.  Gold star to me ;)

A couple new videos this week.  Decelerator was on Monday and I really didn't enjoy that one.   Disappointing as it's in twice next week *sigh*  It didn't feel like it was all that challenging, but I was *really* dragging through MMX the next day, which I usually enjoy, so it obviously made me work a little harder than I'd thought.

Eccentric Lower and Eccentric Upper were both really good and decently challenging, although I need to buy more weight for eccentric lower.   There the focus is on really slow down and then fast up -- regardless the move.  For most things that was okay.  For push-ups it was absolutely brutal.  Completely toasted me.

On the plus side, am finally starting to see results, so that's nice ;)

Just realized I haven't done a single Friday Flash this year -- and there are no Friday's left :(  Boooo.  Moving every Friday made that more of a challenge than I'd expected.   Fail.

Anyways -- really looking forward to a day of nothingness tomorrow.  Then a ton of stuff to do in the week off ;)

Hope you had an amazing Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

So it was time to get our Christmas tree; despite the fact that we're still in the house with the giant ceilings, we were thinking something slightly smaller than last year...  Figured we'd go to the store, pick up a tree, and come home.  That's what civilized people do right?

So we ended up driving down this driveway at a tree farm...

...that had this very promising sign.

The farm had a Christmas Store with all kinds of nick nacks and decorations, but sadly no tree skirts, which was the one thing we actually needed.

We ventured out to look at the trees, but those that had been pre-cut were rather sad looking.  So we grabbed a saw and went in search of a tree.

This is not as much of an adventure as you might otherwise think...

Of course the tree Chris liked best was green.

But in the end we decided it'd be a white Christmas.

They had no sleds available when we got there, so Chris and I dragged it back to the road, then he went and got the truck for the rest of the trip.  When we got back to the shopping area, we took the tree over to where we'd picked up the saw, and it was placed on the shaker.

Loading the tree on the shaker

This slightly ingenious machine literally shakes the tree, encouraging all loose needles, pine cones, leaves, and critters to vacate.  Awesome idea.   Following the shaking the tree was loaded onto the tree version of a hay bailer.

After it was eaten by this machine, it came out all nicely compacted and wrapped.

All in all an amusing day, with the snow gently falling in an appropriately picturesque manner.  The tree is now up in our living room, but as I lack the ambition to decorate it at the moment, you'll have to wait till tomorrow for that picture ;)   I am, however, thoroughly amused we cut our own and glad we did.  Just seems like one of those things you should do at least once.  Check.

Although we still don't have a tree skirt -- those things are remarkably hard to find!

Once you've gone half way, you know you can make it all the way.

So I'm officially half way through P90X3!   Woohoo!   Silver star to me :)   Lessons learned this week -- doing The Warrior and MMX on the same day is a horrible life choice.  Just trust me on that one.

I also managed to scrunch my spine in today's workout -- no idea how as wasn't doing anything that should even have the potential for that, but ow...   Was okay most of the day but now just ow :(   Hoping it doesn't stay hurt for too long, but worst case I'm on vacation the week before xmas and can go visit chiro if I have to.

At half way through I'm liking the change in my strength, but cardio and weight not so much.  I think I'm going to have to suck it up and start running again.  Much as I dislike running, it really does have the fastest and best result of any exercise I've ever done.  I just hope the weather holds a few more weeks...   I suspect once I drop said pounds, maintaining with a P90X type program will be np at all.   Mostly though, I'm liking the fact that I'm getting into the habit of exercise again.   Having something specific to do every day that only takes 30 mins makes it a lot easier to regain that habit.

Now the interesting challenge will be continuing through the holidays ;)   The exercise part will be no challenge since I'm off work, so that buys me some time.   But the food part....  hmmmmm

Almost half way through...

Finished week six of P90X3.   Week SIX!  Already.  That is fairly unbelievable to me.   And the word of the week is sore.  More so than any other week so far *sigh*    I thought I was doing so well -- Tuesday I completed all of the Warrior with no modifications or exhaustion.  Sweet.  Yoga/Pilates day got moved to the weekend so that I wouldn't have to move all my gear to Paris (the joys of living in two homes).  MMX was still entertaining the second time around, although far less overwhelming this time as I had some idea what was going to happen.  But the Thurs/Fri combo of Incinerator and CVX just toasted me entirely.   Fri night woke up in the middle of the night with back, shoulders and quads screaming at me.  I suppose I should be glad that's only the second time that's happened since starting this program, but I definitely was not so amused last night.  And today (Sat) I've been dragging all day.

I can do almost all the exercises in this week's videos -- the only ones I can't are the pull ups and chin ups.  Chin ups, on a good day I can get about half way.   hahhaha if I can do one chin up by the end of this, I'll be pretty stoked ;)   And as for pull ups?  Yeah, they're more of a hang and swing activity at the moment. We shall see.  The rest though I can manage to some degree, and I do like the days that include the weights -- way more interesting.

So far though, I've been able to check off every single day.   Some days it's more of a challenge than others for sure, but I've at least shown up.  The fact that it's only half an hour is actually fairly motivating -- I can't justify spending that time on Facebook if I haven't at least made an effort to exercise and I don't need to go anywhere to do it.  Half an hour before dinner or before opening my kobo or whatever -- it's doable.   Some days harder than others certainly, but doable.

Have to admit, I'm looking forward to rest day tomorrow ;)