Even though I saw “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”twice in a week, I still had one more musical to go for the week! A month or so ago, I saw that there was going to be a musical parody of “Hocus Pocus”. It was being performed at the Rockwell, and I had loved when I saw the show there before. My friends Dani and Michelle were both interested and we picked the first date that we could get tickets.
We didn’t think about the show being the week after our first show for Pantages, so it was pretty funny when we realized it was going to be a musical filled week. But it ended up being a really perfect situation and I’m so glad that we did it!
Last time I was at the Rockwell, we got tickets through a ticket reseller so we didn’t get to pick our seats. This time, we did have a choice and we found seats at a table right next to the runway going through the middle of the room. We figured we’d have a perfect view of the show and were so excited to have amazing seats.
When we got there, we were the first ones seated at our table. Shortly after sitting down, the other group seated at our table sat down and we made a bit of small talk. It’s pretty hard not to talk when you are all squished together. The other group we were sitting with were really nice and they had some friends involved in the show and the venue so we were meeting quite a few people there. And we ended up finding out that the woman sitting right next to me is Ariana Grande’ mom! That was pretty awesome and we thought it was just a funny LA type of night.
When the show started, we really didn’t know what we were in for but we had heard the show was great! And great didn’t even begin to explain it! This show was probably one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life! The performers were all insanely talented and this show was so funny that we were all laughing so hard we were crying.
We were expecting there to be songs that were created just for this musical parody, but they ended up using lots of popular songs. I’m glad they did that because the music was recognizable and it really made everything that much funnier. Each song they used was perfect and I wish there was a soundtrack to buy because I would totally listen to it over and over!
One of the fun things about being at a show at the Rockwell is it is a dinner theater venue. We ordered an appetizer to share, we each got an entrée, and then we split a dessert. Dani and Michelle ordered drinks, but I just stuck with water. We tried to get our bill when the show had the intermission (we didn’t want to be stuck trying to pay at the end of the show), and the waiter said that it was already paid for. It turns out that Ariana Grande’s mom decided to pay for our meals and drinks! It was so unexpected and we couldn’t thank her enough. I wish there was something more we could have done to thank her because it really was so nice for her to do that!
At the end of the show, we said goodbye to the other group seated at our table (and thanked Ms. Grande again several more times) and headed back to the car to drive home. All 3 of us could not stop talking about how much fun the night was and how we wished the show was going to have a lot more shows so we could possibly go again (the show is closing this weekend if anyone is trying to go). We really lucked out in getting these tickets and hearing about this show, and we’ve discovered there are several more shows coming up at the Rockwell that we are hoping to go to in the near future.
Even though we got to see “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” on Sunday with our season tickets for Pantages, I actually went back again on Thursday! It is extremely rare for me to see a show more than once (I think I’ve seen maybe 5 musicals more than once) and I’ve never seen a show that I wasn’t working in twice within a week. But we had a reason behind the craziness.
This current tour of the show stars Darren Criss as Hedwig and Lena Hall as Yitzhak (she won a Tony for playing this on Broadway). However on Sunday evening shows, Lena Hall plays Hedwig and Shannon Conley plays Yitzhak (and Darren Criss has the night off). We absolutely loved seeing Lena Hall as the star, but we were curious to see how Darren Criss played it and we wanted to see Lena Hall in her Tony winning role. So on the ride home from our show on Sunday, we found some cheap balcony seats for Thursday and decided we would see the show both ways.
Of the 4 of us in the Pantages group, only myself and Michelle could make it on Thursday (we never could find a night where 3 or 4 of us could go). So she and I dealt with the rush hour traffic, managed to find a meter to park in which was $13 cheaper than the lot we normally park in, and decided to get some dinner before the show.
We had dinner at a restaurant near the theater and both of us were so excited to be seeing the show again. We kept saying how crazy it was that we were back, but we had such an amazing time on Sunday that we were ready to go again. Plus, both of us were still feeling a bit overwhelmed and saddened by the election and how people on both sides have been acting. We needed this escape and it was the perfect thing to have planned.
Our seats during our season tickets are on the right side of the audience almost all the way to the side but very close to the front. We do have slightly obstructed views, and the way the set is done for this show it was more than slightly obstructed, but we love our seats. We can see so much and being able to see the expressions on the actors is really fun. For Thursday’s show, we were up on the balcony where we were about halfway up and all the way over to the left side. So we figured that whatever was obstructed on Sunday could be seen this time. Even with our seats being high up, we couldn’t stop being so excited to see the show again!
Overall, the show was really great. Since when I went on Sunday I was a bit overwhelmed (it was the first time I had ever seen the show), it was nice to be able to relax a bit and pay more attention to the show this time. It was interesting to see the differences between how Lena Hall and Darren Criss play Hedwig. And while the script and jokes are pretty much the same, there were some really funny parts that were about Trump winning the election that were really great. And seeing Lena Hall in a role that won her a Tony was just incredible. I’ve never had the opportunity for any shows I’ve seen before and that felt so special to me.
The only real negative part of my time at the show this time was the woman sitting next to me. I don’t know why she felt this was ok, but she took off her shoes during the show and had her bare feet out. And unfortunately for us, her feet didn’t smell nice. I was breathing through my hair for the first half of the show and Michelle found some perfume in her purse for me to use. I sprayed it under my nose and then on my hand so I could smell my hand when I needed to. I thought about saying something, but I figured that if someone feels that doing that is appropriate wouldn’t care or put her shoes back on.
But we did have another funny experience at the show this time. The female usher who was in the section we were sitting in really was into the show! She was doing a lot of restrained dancing during each musical number (you could tell she didn’t want to move too much and distract people). Seeing someone so into a show is just fun and made things seem ok in the world again when in reality there is so much uncertainty.
I’m really glad we got to go back to see the show. I wonder what my opinions would have been like if we saw Darren Criss in the lead first, but I feel like I still would have wanted to see both versions of the show. While it is the same show, it did feel like a totally different experience with how each of them played the role and created the world of Hedwig.
Our next Pantages show is in December, but there have been more musical experiences since this! Shockingly, last week I saw 3 musicals and it was amazing! And my 3rd musical of the week will be in tomorrow’s post!
Posted onNovember 14, 2016|Comments Off on A Powerful Workout Week (or Feeling Amazing Again)
After such a successful 5K race, I had a feeling this week of workouts would be great. And I was right! This past week, I felt stronger, more powerful, and more like an athlete than I have in a long time. I scheduled myself for a 4 workout week and I’m glad I did that. I need to get back into the groove of a 4th workout and this was a great week to do it since I was still feeling amazing from the race.
Monday’s workout was a power run/row day. I was feeling a bit odd on Monday because before my workout was when I had my appointment with the surgeon and found out I had a tumor. But I didn’t let that odd feeling stop me. If anything, I kept thinking that if I could do my 5K as quickly as I could with this tumor inside of me, then anything is possible! For the run part of the run/row, I stuck with my run 1 minute/walk 1 minute for the longer segments which were .3 miles. Anything that was .15 miles or under was run in full (usually I could do those in 2 minutes or under). The rows were all sprints of either 300 or 150 meters, so I was moving back and forth between the rower and treadmill quite a bit.
For the floor work that day, we had a bunch of short blocks. Each of the blocks only had 2 things in it so I was feeling tired a bit quicker than usual. But I think that was more a mental thing than a physical thing. For those short floor blocks, we had things like squats and lunges plus some upper body stuff. My legs were feeling a bit shaky after the run/row, but nothing too bad and I felt like I was doing my workout exactly how I wanted to do it.
Wednesday’s workout was an endurance day. We did have a couple of 3 minute push pace segments, and I stuck with my 1 minute run/1 minute walk plan. I do need to start figuring out what my plan with my run/walk training will be. I’m not sure if I want to increase the run time or decrease the walk time. I might have to play around with it a bit to figure out what will work best for me. Even though we had some long push paces, we also had some normal length all outs. And for some of those all outs, I was able to go 6 mph which is very fast for me but doable if I don’t do it too much.
We had a decent amount of row work to do that day as well. One block included a 600 meter row. I was able to get it done in under 3 minutes so I was pretty happy. We also had a 3 minute row challenge and that was a bit tougher because I pushed myself too much at the beginning and was feeling some burnout before we got 2 minutes in. Besides the row work, the floor was focused on arm work. We had a lot of work on the straps and then had some ab work in between which almost felt like a break from the strap work.
Friday was another power run/row day. This time, for the run segments I did 90 seconds of running and 1 minute of walking. It was tough to run for 90 seconds at a time since I’m so used to 1 minute, but it was good to push myself. It also makes the run segments go by faster when I run longer (or faster) so I use that as motivation. All the row segments were either 250 meter rows or a 1 minute sprint. Again, like on Monday, I did a lot of switching back and forth between the treadmill and the rower.
On the floor, we had some arm and squat work where we used weights and I was using the 20 pound ones. And we had a lot of plank work and I was able to hold my planks longer and with better form than I have in a really long time. The entire floor time, I felt more powerful than I had in a while and was really happy with how things were working for me that day. For some reason, the workout just came together really well and it flowed really nicely. It was a feeling I don’t know if I’ve ever had before and it was a really nice confidence boost.
My final workout of the week was on Saturday. I thought about going on the bike for that workout, but I decided to just keep going and doing the treadmill again. It ended up being a workout that had endurance, strength, and power and we were switching between the treadmill and the floor between each block. For the treadmill, for most of the time I stuck with running 1 minute and walking 1 minute. I was able to keep this up for the endurance block and for when we had longer segments on the power block. But for the power block, a lot of stuff was 30 seconds at a time so I just ran the full thing. For the strength block, I stuck with walking the entire time since it was hills. I did some higher inclines, but since it was at the end of the workout I wasn’t as powerful as I was earlier in the workout.
For the floor work, we had a nice mix of stuff. For the endurance floor work, we had some arm work where I could use 20 pound weights plus lunges where I was using 2 15 pound weights. During the power block, we did timed lunges, mountain climbers, and plank work. And during the strength block there was some lower and upper body strap work followed by leg lifts while in a plank (which aren’t easy for my hips but it’s getting better).
I’ve got a relatively normal workout week coming up this week, but the next week will be Thanksgiving week so things will be a bit mixed up for me. But I will be going to my Thanksgivingmorning workout in La Jolla with my family and I’m so excited about it! Plus, this year for the Thanksgiving workout there will be 7 of us going! I’ve got to train really hard this week so I’m in the best shape possible for my workout with my family (my dad is already talking about how he will be kicking my butt in the workout)!
Since my appointment with the surgeon about my liver was in the morning, I knew I’d have that afternoon free. And when I have an afternoon free, I always contact my friend Michelle to see if she wants to go to Disneyland or something. We had gone to Disneyland recently enough, so we decided that we should do another adventure at Universal Studios. And right before that day, we discovered that they were offering one of the special Harry Potter drinks as a hot version for the first time there! So we figured it was meant to be that we went to the park.
Our entire reason to go to Universal was to ride the Harry Potter ride again and to get the hot butterbeer. We decided to get our drinks first since we were both a bit hungry and wanted a snack. We were warned that the drinks were hot so we decided to find a place outside to sit and people watch while we waited for the drinks to cool down.
For those of you wondering, yes the hot butterbeer is awesome! I really love the frozen one, but this is just as good. It’s not as sweet as I expected it to be (except for the topping which was a bit too sweet but I didn’t taste that until I got to the end of the drink) and it felt like such a treat! We just hung out and relaxed while enjoying our drinks (and discussed the craziness of me having a tumor).
Our next stop was to ride the main ride in the Harry Potter section. After my fat shaming incident, things have gotten much better and I do enjoy the ride now. I use the alternative loading area so I have more time to get into the ride, but there is no issue with me fitting into it. The ride was just as fun as it was the last time and I know it will be one of those rides that I go on each time I go to Universal.
The only other ride we went on was the little roller coaster in the Harry Potter section. It’s a cute little ride (nothing too crazy), but since we didn’t want to do too much else in the park it was a nice way to spend some time.
Besides the butterbeer, the other main thing about going to Universal was to see the Harry Potter castle lit up at night. With the time change, there was finally a chance to see that happen. But we had some time to kill before the sun went down. At least the sky looked really pretty while we waited.
And we got to check out one of the short shows that they do as well. I hadn’t seen one of the shows before, but this was really cute (even though I haven’t really read or watched Harry Potter and didn’t know all the references).
They do character photos after the show and we had no plan to stick around for it. But then they decided that the line would be starting behind us and we realized that since we were first we might as well take advantage of it and get a fun photo from the day.
And before we knew it, the sun was down and the castle was lit up. It really was beautiful to be there looking around because they worked really hard on making this section of the park look amazing.
You get sucked into the world and it feels like the outside world doesn’t exist anymore. You get to escape, which was perfect since this was the day before the election and we were both scared what would happen (I’m still pretty freaked out now after it’s all gone down).
We walked back through the Harry Potter land to get back to the main gate to leave the park (it was only a few minutes before the park closed so we weren’t going to stick around). We went to a fun Chinese restaurant at Citywalk for dinner to wait out rush hour traffic before heading home.
It wasn’t that long of a visit to Universal Studios (we were there less than 2 hours), but it was a lot of fun. After being nervous about my doctor appointment and then in probably a bit of shock after, I needed something to distract me from my day and make things end on a positive note.
My pass to Universal is about halfway done. I’ve got about 6 months to keep going to the parks and then I’ll have to figure out if I want to get a new pass. Before this, I hadn’t been to the parks since I worked there, but now I’m really enjoying it. It’s not as fun as going to Disneyland most of the time, but this is much closer to me and I still have a great time there. I’m hoping I’ll get at least another couple of visits in before my pass expires and I have to make a new plan on what to do.
After I found out that there might be a cyst on my liver, there have been a couple of different medical tests I’ve had to do. I had to do another MRI with contrast and some more blood work (both things involved needles) so that the doctors could figure out what was going on. I knew that there was something wrong (I didn’t believe that the situation could just be one big mistake), but until this week I really didn’t know exactly what was happening. I just knew that something didn’t look normal but nothing looked so horrible that I had to rush to get tests done.
I tried to avoid looking things up online because if there was a cyst there are so many types of cysts that I don’t know what to look for. And if it wasn’t a cyst, I had no clue what it could be so trying to research things was pretty pointless. I figured that when I met with the surgeon I had to meet I could ask him all my questions and try to understand what was going on. I made a decent list of questions to ask him and went to my first consultation with this surgeon this past Monday.
The first thing that I learned was that I don’t have a cyst in my liver. I actually have a benign (non-cancerous) tumor in there. I know that the word tumor sounds bad, but this may actually be better than having a cyst in my liver. The tumor is both inside and on the outside of my liver and it’s pretty large (not as large as they thought, but still close to half the size of my liver). This is not an urgent situation and I’m not in any pain, so there’s no need for me to panic.
This tumor is likely one of two types of tumor. One type doesn’t have to be removed and is a relatively common type of benign liver tumor. The other type is a rare type of liver tumor that is almost only seen in women around my age who take birth control. The tumor is a side effect of the birth control hormones (but a very rare side effect) and it would need to be removed. Because the tumor doesn’t present like how either of those types of tumors look, I have to do some more medical testing. But I did get a good laugh out of the fact that my tumor is not typical since it seems like all my medical issues present as atypical and I’d expect nothing less from this.
The surgeon I met with was really amazing. He was fine answering all my crazy questions I had and let me take pictures of the MRI images so that I could show them to my family. And he was explaining as much as possible about the tumor to me. It’s tough to explain it when he’s not sure what type of tumor it is, but he did his best. I’m really happy that this is the surgeon that I randomly got paired with to work with on this. Some doctors don’t understand my need to understand things as detailed as I do, but he was almost happy to find out that I want to know things and make educated decisions.
While I was hoping that at this appointment I would get a proper diagnosis, plan, and find out if I need surgery; I’m ok with this just being the first step in whatever this journey ends up being. It’s going to either be something to monitor for the rest of my life or be a surgery sometime next year so I’m not in a rush. I want to make sure everything is understood before decisions are made and that’s what’s happening. I’m hoping I’ll have the additional testing (which will be another MRI and possibly one more test) in the next week so that I can have some better answers by Thanksgiving. That way I can discuss things with my parents in person (they help me make all major medical decisions since they worked in that field).
No matter what type of tumor this ends up being, I’m going to be fine. There is no reason anyone should worry about me. I’m not in any pain (my stomach pain had nothing to do with this and was possibly a really severe stomach flu) and there are no restrictions on my lifestyle right now. I can do everything I’ve been doing and I don’t need to worry about this hurting me or causing major issues right now. While it’s not great to have something in your body that isn’t supposed to be there, this isn’t a huge deal and whatever ends up being the plan will be just fine. I promise to keep you all updated as I have more information!
Earlier this year, the Pantages announced the 16-17 season for musicals. This past season I didn’t have season tickets (I did the Black Friday deal instead) but I had them the season prior and it was so much fun! And most of the shows in the coming season looked pretty awesome so I was happy to order season tickets. Plus, the last show of this coming season is “Hamilton” and for what we paid for our season, single ticket buyers will be paying for that show!
We ordered our season tickets so long ago that it seemed like the first show would never get here! But this past Sunday, we finally had our first show of the season! This time, there are 4 of us in the group for the tickets and since we all live pretty close to each other we are planning on carpooling for the shows. We decided to go a bit early on Sunday so we could get some dinner before the 6:30pm show.
Fortunately there are a bunch of places to eat near Pantages, so we should be able to try a bunch of different restaurants over the 7 show season that we have. And most of them are quick service places so we should always have time before the show to go get dinner. While we were eating, we were talking a lot about how excited we were to have our first show of the season. The show was “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and while I saw the Tony Awards performance recently, I have never seen the show or the movie. I had no idea what I was in for, but I like to be surprised.
When we bought our season tickets, it wasn’t easy to find 4 seats in a row in the price range we wanted to be in (we wanted the cheapest seats). So we ended up getting 2 seats in one row and 2 seats directly behind those. It worked out pretty well for us and we are pretty close to the stage! And being off to the side does cause occasional sight line issues, but it’s never been that big of an issue at any of the shows I had been to before.
It seemed like a lot of people in the audience were season ticket holders like us. And I’m thinking a lot of them didn’t really know what they were in for with this show (maybe they just got the season tickets to be able to see “Hamilton”?). While most of the audience seemed to enjoy the show, there were more walk outs during this show than I’ve ever seen. And I saw people covering their ears during songs as well.
Personally, I really enjoyed the show. I wasn’t expecting it to be a concert style show (I thought there would be scenes taking place in between the songs), but it was a nice difference compared to most of the musicals that I see. I thought the songs were all done really well and the set was fun to look at. While the tour of this show has been advertising that it stars Darren Criss, he doesn’t perform on Sunday evenings so we got to see Lena Hall in the lead role. She actually won a Tony for playing the other part, but she did amazing in the show!
I think we all agreed that this show was a great way to kick off a new season of musicals. We will pretty much get to see a show every month for the next several months with our last show being “Hamilton” in August. Each of the shows we get to see should be a really fun adventure and there’s only 1 show in the season that I’ve already seen (“Book of Mormon”) and I think all the other shows look really good.
Even though season tickets are a splurge, it really makes me so happy to go to the shows and I think that it’s so worth it. There have been so many times where I didn’t do something I wanted to because of the cost and I think that sometimes you need to put mental health above financial health. I love having these shows to look forward to and going out to more cultural events does seem to make the quality of my life so much better. So here’s to another full season of musical adventures!
This past Saturday I had the HardRockCafe 5K. I’ve done this race several times in the past and I had been really looking forward to it. It’s a really nice out and back flat course and since I have done the race before I’m very familiar with the course and know when I’m getting close to the turn around. For a while, I had been training hard to make this a run/walk race (for the first time ever!). But after getting sick I wasn’t able to train like I was before and I felt like I lost a lot of progress and endurance. I figured that I would do my best, but I wasn’t expecting too much for this race.
I was able to pick up my race stuff on Friday after work, so I prepped all my stuff Friday night before going to bed. I usually wear a hip pack to carry my phone, keys, and anything else I need before/during/after a race. But I knew that wearing that would make running very difficult, so I had to plan differently. Since my workout pants have a little pocket, I could put my phone in there and I strung my keys through my headphone cord and put those in the pocket too. So I was feeling very free for whatever running I was going to be able to do.
Race morning I woke up at 5am and quickly got ready. I ate a little bit of a banana so I’d have something in my stomach, but my nerves were getting the best of me so I couldn’t eat or drink too much. By 5:30am I was in my car and headed to Hollywood and Highland where the race was. Once I parked, I got ready in my car and in the parking lot since it was nicely lit down there and it was a bit warmer than it was outside. And about an hour before the race was supposed to start, I headed up to street level to stretch and do my best to prep before the start.
I tried to keep moving around so I didn’t get too stiff and was stretching my legs and hips. I really didn’t want pain to be a reason why my race wouldn’t be good, so I was working hard to make sure my body was ready to go. I did find some friends before we started, and seeing them made me feel a bit more relaxed and ready to see what I could do. And before I knew it, we were ready to go (we started right on time at 7am which was nice).
I had my running watch ready to go with 1 minute intervals set. So I was planning on running for 1 minute and then walking for 1 minute for as long as I could. In my training runs on my own, I usually could do that 5 or 6 times and then I would have to start cutting back on the running time. I would do 45 or 30 seconds of the 1 minute run and then walk the rest. I knew this was likely to happen, so I wasn’t thinking ever that I could do the full running minutes for the entire race. I just wanted to try my best and see what I could do. For this race, I really just wanted to finish in under 50 minutes (which would easily be a PR). My long-term goal was to finish in under 45 minutes, but that wasn’t even a though for this race.
Once I started, I started my watch and my music and started to run. The first minute of running went by quickly and very easily. I tried to stay toward the side of the course so that I wouldn’t bother people by walking. Sometimes I had to go around walkers when I was running, but that wasn’t that big of a deal and just tried to not obstruct any other races.
When my running watch is doing intervals, the default screen is showing how much longer is in that interval and how many intervals I’ve done. I keep it on that screen and while I can get an idea of what time it is, I didn’t want to focus on my time while racing. The first mile marker came up and I was still able to do my full minute of running each interval and I was very happy with that. I passed the water station while walking and took a few sips of water before focusing on the second mile.
The second mile is always the tough one for this race for me. The turnaround is in this mile and I know the course probably too much so I’m pretty focused on how many blocks were left before turning back. I just tried to focus on my music and trying to do the best running I could do. I was still able to do my full minute of running each interval, which is significantly better than I’ve ever done during a training run. When I saw the turnaround sign, I was very happy. Normally, I try to tap the sign and I see it as good luck. But there was a slowish walker in my way and I couldn’t touch the sign this time. I tried not to let that get to me and just thought about how I was halfway done!
The second half was a bit tough. There were times where the running minute was feeling like it was taking forever. I would glance at my watch and see that there were less than 15 seconds to go before I could walk and I kept deciding to finish the running minute. I know that I told myself that I didn’t have to run/walk the entire race, but I am so competitive with myself and wanted to test my limits. Once I saw the 2 mile sign, I finally started to realize that I might actually be able to maintain my intervals for the entire race. There is a bit of a downhill going toward the finish line and that is always really nice to get to. I saw the markers for the 10K race and knew I had .2 miles left to go. I just kept saying to myself that I can totally finish at this pace because it was almost done.
My last walking interval was very close to the finish line. I knew I didn’t want to finish knowing I could have done more running. So I cut my walking minute short and decided I would run for the rest of the race. It ended up being about 90 seconds of running and I finished the race sprinting across the finish line.
I stopped my watch as soon as I crossed the finish line. I had seen the official race clock say that it was almost 46 minutes and I knew that I started after the official start since I was toward the middle of the pack. But when I looked at my watch to see what it said, I was so sure that I had screwed something up because I really could not believe it.
My watch was saying that my time was 44:47.8. I really thought that I either started it too late or stopped it too soon and figured I would wait to see what the official time sheets said before I got too excited. I knew I finished in under 46 minutes because of the official clock and that was also unbelievable but I knew it was right.
While I was waiting for the official times to be posted, I found some of my friends. My friend Brenda is a part of the Oscars/Halloween party group. She also had some issues with being able to train recently and was not expecting anything too crazy. But she was able to PR for the race and did amazing!
I also ran into Heather, who is the executive director of My Friend’s Place. My Friend’s Place is the official charity for the race and they always have a team running it. It was great to get to see her again and I’m hoping I can do some more work with My Friend’s Place in the near future.
Finally, the official time sheets were updated so I could check what my time was. And after looking at it, I finally had to believe that I did was well as my watch claimed.
My official time was 44:48 (which is basically the same thing as 44:47.8) Not only did I PR (by over 9 minutes) I actually beat the long-term goal I had of doing a race in under 45 minutes! I really did not expect to do anything close to this and even a few days later I’m still in a bit of shock. After having several disappointing races when I felt like I did really great, I was expecting this to be similar. But I actually did better than I ever could have imagined!
I wasn’t able to drive home right away because I was in such disbelief. I made a couple of phone calls to people who I knew wanted to know how my race went. Each time I said my time, I could barely believe what I was saying. But soon enough hopefully I’ll start to believe that I did it. I’ve got to focus now on some new race goals because I did all of them in a race that I was so stressed out about.
Once I got home, I added my new medal to my medal hanger (I’m looking at buying an extension for it since I’m running out of room).
I spent the rest of my day relaxing and trying to nap since I had gotten up so early that morning. I kept looking online at my race time trying to believe it and not think that I’m dreaming or that some mistake happened. I know that I had trained hard for this race, but my training never got such incredible results. I think a lot of it had to do with race day adrenaline and that helped me to run more than I normally can do.
I never expected to have such an amazing race day. I’m glad that I still pushed myself even though I knew that things might not go the way I was hoping they would. Even though I thought I had given up on myself a little bit, I guess deep down I really hadn’t and this was my mind’s way of telling me to keep pushing it. And I’ll get the chance to test that out again in about 6 months when I have the next 5K happening (unless I find another race I want to do before then). But for now, I’m just so happy and grateful that my hard work paid off and I had the greatest race day I even could have wanted.
Posted onNovember 7, 2016|Comments Off on Getting Back To Normal (or Finishing Hell Week and Race Prep)
This past week of workouts was a 3 workout week, but I didn’t go easy on myself at all! My week started with the end of Hell Week and then my last 2 workouts were very focused on getting ready for my 5K. I was feeling pretty much completely normal, so I saw no need to try to take it easy and decided to go all out on the 3 workouts that I had.
Monday was the end of Hell Week and it was a Trick or Treat 3G workout. That meant that on each part of the workout (treadmill, floor, rower) we pulled a card from a plastic pumpkin and it told us what to do. There were some good cards (the treats) and some cards that were really tough instructions (the tricks).
I got to start on the treadmill and first pulled a Treat card. I had to do 30 second push paces, 30 second all out paces, and 30 second walking recovery for 3 rounds. I was running for both the push and all out paces, but I was keeping my speed the same since the walking time was less than I’m used to. I got through that card pretty quickly and then went over to pull my next treadmill card. It was another Treat card that said I had to do 1 minute push paces, 1 minute all outs, and 30 second walking recoveries. I did walk the push paces at 8% incline, but ran much faster for my all out pace than I did for the first card. I only made it 2 rounds before the time was done and I headed over to the floor.
My first card on the floor was a Trick card. I had to start with 31 burpees before moving on to the workout plan. Those 31 burpees were not easy at all and I had to take breaks after 4 or 5, but I did manage to get through it and was able to move on to the rest of the floor work. It was a good mix of upper and lower body work and I had to do pushups, ab work, and lunges. Just as I was finishing up all the work, it was time to switch over to the rower for the end of the workout.
On the rower, I pulled another Trick card. It was to for 3100 meters and we only had about 13 minutes left in class for the day. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get my full 3100 meters in, so I decided to just try for the best and see what I could do. I did have to take breaks every so often because I was so exhausted from all the other hard work that day, but I managed to get just about 2200 meters done before class was done.
And after completing my 5th Hell Week class, I was officially a Hell Week Survivor and earned my shirt!
Wednesday we were back to normal workouts, but they weren’t easy! That day was a strength day so I ended up doing quite a bit of walking. We had a lot of higher hill work and most of my walking was done at 10-14% incline. We did have a few things at a flat incline so I was able to run for those, but a majority of my work was walking at an incline. We also had a mini run/row assignment that day. I ran .15 miles (which took me about 2 minutes) and then rowed 300 meters. I didn’t make it through that many rounds of the run/row, but it felt good to get that running practice in.
When we got to the floor, I was able to work a lot harder than normal and it felt really great! We did have some ab work which wasn’t so great for me (I’m still occasionally feeling weird pressure in my stomach when I do sit-ups or crunches) but the rest of the work was either at the level I was at before or better. I was able to do squats and lunges with better form (and less stability issues) and was doing my arm work at 15 pounds. And when we did pullovers, there were no 20 pound weights for me to use so I had to use the 25 pound ones. It was a struggle to use the heavier weights, but I was able to get through the sets and realized that my strength didn’t get worse with my time taking it easy.
My last workout of the week was on Thursday (I didn’t work out on Friday since I had the race on Saturday morning). It was a power day and that made me so happy. Power days are usually my best days to work on my running and I needed that confidence boost before race day. Most of the time, we had a lot of the same stuff on the treadmill. It was push pace to all outs and usually they were 45 second intervals. So that was 90 seconds of running and then we’d usually have a minute to walk to recover. This was a more intense interval than what I do when I work on my running on my own, so this was a great way to build some extra endurance for the race. And once we were done on the treadmill, I realized that I had reached a workout goal. For a while, I have wanted to get to 2 miles during the treadmill time in a workout. That would mean I was close to 15 minute miles during class. So it was great to see this screen when I was done.
On the floor, we had a bunch of upper body work. I was doing chest presses and we had lunges that had weighted twists (I really felt that in my shoulders). And to finish the workout, we had a short rowing block. It was a similar pattern to the treadmill where we had 45 seconds intense rowing and then 30 seconds to recover. And after that workout, I felt as ready as I could be for my race on Saturday.
This ended up being a great week of workouts for me. I gained a lot of confidence I lost after being sick and finally was feeling more like myself and able to do my best on my race. I’ll write about the race tomorrow, but if you follow me on social media, I think you know how it went!
Posted onNovember 4, 2016|Comments Off on Losing Some Weight (or Confused If This Is Good)
When I got sick, my food got weird for a while. The day I spent in the hospital, all I had for food was a cup of chicken broth. The next few days were pretty similar and I slowly added more soft foods in. Even at Disneyland, I was eating soft foods with having a Dole Whip and soup. I’ve been keeping this toward soft and bland food for 2 weeks now.
I’m finally starting to eat a bit more normally, but I’m still restricting things a lot. I’m a bit paranoid because I know I ate poorly right before I got sick. I have no clue if that is what caused the stomach pain, but right now it’s not worth the risk. I’m trying to keep things very basic, but my calorie counts are much closer to what I know I should be eating in a day (compared to being under 800 calories in a day with the broth and limited soft foods).
I will be asking the doctor that I see next week if there are any food restrictions I need to be aware of to help my liver, but I don’t think I’ll be eating the way that I did before for a while. This could be a very good thing. Maybe this shock to my system will help me get over binge eating. I’m trying to not be too optimistic because I know that a relapse is always possible. But with the exception of the time that I was doing the RFO diet, right now is the longest I’ve gone without a binge episode.
Because of my restricted food and lack of bingeing, I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently. Since getting sick, I’m down almost 20 pounds. It’s insane to me and I know that type of weight loss is not realistic and is a result of not eating enough several days in a row. I don’t want to gain the weight back, but I’m aware that some of the loss might be water weight and might come back before I’m able to lose it again.
I personally didn’t notice a huge difference in how I look even with that much weight loss. I figured that my clothes were fitting looser, but nobody could see that so I figured nobody would notice the loss. But this past week especially, people in my life have been coming up to me and saying how I look like I’ve lost a bunch of weight. It’s great to hear compliments like that, but I also feel like I don’t deserve them.
This weight loss wasn’t because of hard work. It was because I got sick possibly because of my eating disorder and the results of being sick (ironically, in the past I usually gain weight when I’m sick so this is very odd to me). I didn’t do anything to earn the weight loss. There’s a chance that it will come back so I don’t know if I want others to see it because I don’t want people to notice if I gain it back.
I’m trying to be gracious when people compliment me and say thank you. But when close friends say something, I’m usually honest and say that I only lost weight because I was sick and I didn’t do anything for it. It’s a confusing place to be in since I’ve been working so hard to lose the weight, but I don’t feel right that I made the scale because of this.
I don’t want this all to be in my head too much. Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue the weight loss on my own and this will be a trend that is able to continue. It is weird to me to lose weight normally since I usually have only done it in an extreme way and it was expected that I would lose weight quickly. I hope that this feels normal to me sooner rather than later because I am loving the fact that I’m doing so great with food right now. I don’t want to go back, but I know that I have to work really hard to try to make that not happen.
Posted onNovember 3, 2016|Comments Off on MRI Again (or Hoping For Some Answers)
When I did my breast MRI to check for breast cancer, I assumed that the next MRI that I would need would be whenever I get another one on my hips. Since I’ve had very limited MRIs (just my original hip one and the breast one), there was no reason I would think I’d be getting another one soon. But after my stomach issues, I was told I needed an MRI to figure out what was going on.
I ended up getting one scheduled earlier this week. I wanted to do it on a day that I didn’t have to work because I knew they would need to put an IV in me for contrast. I had the IV and contrast in the breast MRI and didn’t enjoy it too much, so I was prepared for the worst but hoped for the best. When I arrived at Kaiser, they were running about 45 minutes behind, so I sat in the waiting area reading a book and trying not to think too much about what was coming up.
When I was taken back to the MRI area, I was expecting to be led into a changing area where I would have to take off any clothing that had metal and I assumed I would also need to be either nude or down to underwear only under a hospital gown (that’s what the other MRIs were like). But to my surprise, the only thing required was to remove any clothing that had metal in it! If I had known that, I would have worn a sports bra so I wouldn’t have had to change. I didn’t get a fun hospital gown selfie, but I did take a quick photo of my MRI outfit before going into the machine.
Once I was brought into the room, I laid down on the table that goes into the machine. The techs tried to get me comfortable with pillows and settled before putting the IV in me. I had warned them about my needle issues but said that since I was laying down that if I fainted it wouldn’t be a big deal. I didn’t faint (yay me!) but I did have a brief moment where I blacked out but could still hear everything around me. It wasn’t too bad and I was glad the IV was in and done.
I didn’t really do any research about abdominal MRIs before going in, but I assumed I’d be laying on my back and just be put into the machine. But they actually had to put this plastic and foam cage type thing around my stomach first and then I was strapped down to the table (I’ve never been strapped down for an MRI before). I wasn’t able to move at all, and it really sucked when they pushed me into the machine and all of a sudden my nose was itching like crazy and I couldn’t scratch!
I’ve got some issues with claustrophobia and this really tested me. I was completely in the machine and my nose was pretty close to touching the top of the tube. My arms were pressed against the sides and I did feel a bit trapped between the closeness of the machine and the straps holding me down. Fortunately, I could tilt my head back a bit and see a bit of the room behind me. So whenever I felt like I was going to panic I did that and tried to focus on my breathing.
The contrast in my IV hurt like it did last time, but it hurt much less than it did before. I’m thinking that is because my IV was placed in a better spot this time where my body wasn’t as crunched up. But they still removed the IV from me once the contrast was done so I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.
The entire MRI time was under 30 minutes and while I had moments of panic in the machine it did go by quickly. I tried to talk to myself in my head and recite lines from scripts I know or plots from books to distract me and help pass the time. Once it was done, I was finally able to relax and only then did I realize that I was pretty tensed up the entire time inside the machine. It’s wasn’t too bad, but some of my muscles felt sore like I had done a workout.
While I’m not happy I’m going through this medical unknown right now, I’m working on thinking of the positives. I’ve had more opportunities to work on my issues with needles and I feel like it is getting better. I’m hopeful that maybe in a few years I won’t have even the little blackouts with needles. I also was able to test my claustrophobia and panic disorder and had to force myself to settle those issues without medication or any distractions.
I haven’t heard anything about the MRI since going in, but that’s a good sign. I have an appointment to discuss what’s happening and what the plan is with a surgeon next week, and if I heard something sooner that would only mean something really bad and urgent is wrong with me. I’m very hopeful that this is going be a situation that will just be something that needs to be monitored from time to time and not something that will require surgery soon. But no matter what the plan and situation is, I know that it will be fine and I will be ok.
Finding Neverland (or An Unexpected Musical Experience)
