Tag Archives: goals

A 4 Workout Week (or Only A Few More Weeks Of 2015 Workouts)

Posted on December 7, 2015 | 2 comments

With the end of the year approaching super quickly, I’m making sure that I do as many workouts as I can do to make sure that I hit my 2015 goal. It’s going to be close, but I think I can do it. I just have to up my workout game a bit for the next few weeks and do 4 workouts in a week more often.

It’s been tough getting back into 4 workout weeks. I was doing so great before I got hurt, and I’ve only done the rare 4 workout week since then. But this past week was a 4 workout week and I think it was pretty great.

My first workout of the week was on Sunday. I was still recovering from Thanksgiving, but it was great to have an early workout to get me back into a normal routine and out of vacation mode. The workout went ok. I was a bit too exhausted that morning and I know that my workout suffered for that. It’s tough when I’m tired, but I try my best and in the end I know that it’s better to be there doing not my greatest than to be still in bed sleeping.

Monday was another super early workout (only 1 more week of my class which means 1 more super early workout for a while). Again, being tired didn’t really help me and I know that if it was a later workout that I could have done better. But I’m trying to be easier on myself with those early mornings and not stressing out too much about it.

I wasn’t at the workout on Tuesday, but Tuesday marked the beginning of the 12 days of workouts at Orangetheory. But when I was there on Wednesday, because it was the second day it was a partner workout! I really love partner workouts because they motivate me so much. I don’t want to slack off because then my partner is stuck waiting on me to finish to they can move on to the next thing.

This partner workout was a bit different. The treadmill segment wasn’t partnered but the floor work was. On the floor, it was mainly leg work. Lots of lunges and then when my partner was on the floor I was on the rower. It was a pretty good combination of what we each had to do. And since my partner and I were pretty equally skilled in doing the floor work, we spent equal amounts of time between the floor and the rower.

The treadmill time was a lot of hills. While I do hills all the time on the treadmill because I’m a power walker, I’m still keeping things on the lower side to protect my calf. And when the runners have to do hills, I’m supposed to do even higher hills. I couldn’t do that, but I did my best with the hills that I could and I know that I got a really great workout in.

Friday was the 4th day of holiday workouts, and the theme for it was that there were 4 floor blocks and 4 treadmill blocks. And each block was about 4 minutes. So there was a lot of transitions and switching between the floor and treadmill (which I like) and the workout just flew by! After those 8 blocks, we also had a quick partner block on the floor (one person using the straps and one person using the weights).

After this 4 workout week, I feel much better about my future 4 workout weeks. I know that they should be doable and fine. I’m working on balancing things out and trying to not do 3 workouts in a row on 4 workout weeks (I think I’ll be ok avoiding that for these next few weeks). But it’s also getting me thinking about what I want to set for my 2016 workout goal. I don’t think that it is realistic for me right now to try to do 4 workouts every week. I like alternating 3 workouts and 4 workouts a week. But I think I might try to set a goal that would require me to do more 4 workout weeks than 3 workout weeks next year.

I’m still crunching the numbers (and I’ve got time before I have to declare my goals) but I think I’ll be upping my game again next year.

Next week may end up being another 4 workout week (there’s a potential scheduling issue that may prevent me from doing that). And now that I’ve got another successful 4 workout week under my belt, I’m not that worried about it anymore.

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged challenge, fitness, goals, Orangetheory, workout

Fitting In My Workouts (or Planning For The End Of The Year)

Posted on November 23, 2015 | Comments Off

I had a reality check this past week when I was seeing how many workouts I had done so far in 2015. While I was on track for a long time to hit my workout goal, only doing 3 workouts in a week for a while due to my calf injury plus missing a week of workouts when I was sick really messed up my plan.

So before this past week started, I planned out some workouts in the app that I’ve been using to track my classes. I got it figured out for the rest of the year how I can hit my goal.

It’s not that crazy of a plan, but of course the next day I realized that my plan wasn’t going to work the way I wanted it to, so I’m thinking things through a bit more. But it helped me realize that I do need to push it a bit the next few weeks and my goal is going to be a stretch but it’s totally realistic.

My plan for this past week was originally to do 5 workouts and then do 2 7am workouts this week before leaving for Thanksgiving. Due to scheduling issues, I wasn’t able to do my 5 workouts and I’ve moved my workouts around this week too. But as long as I add in another workout in December I should be ok.

This past week, I worked out Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I’m glad I changed my plans from working out 5 times because these workouts were pretty intense.

2 days only had 2 blocks each. That means that I spent pretty much 30 minutes on the treadmill straight and then did 30 minutes on the floor without a block. And I did that twice. It’s been a while since we have had workouts that didn’t switch between blocks. It’s nice to have that challenge, but when we switch between blocks it feels better on my hips and it makes the time go by faster for me. But I know I need to push myself and having these long blocks gives me that chance (but I’m glad that this doesn’t happen more often).

With those long block days, my floor work suffered a bit. I was pretty exhausted so I didn’t push myself as much as I could (or should) with the weights. But I’m still using heavier weights than I was at the beginning of the year.

While my weight work wasn’t as good as I know it can be, I had a big improvement in my pushups. Pushups have always been hit or miss with me. Sometimes they do hurt my hips. And ever since I tore my calf I had to stop doing them on my toes because that strained my muscle too much. So instead of trying to get back on my toes I’ve been focusing my form when I do pushups on my knees. And I’m getting some good muscle fatigue now while I’m doing modified pushups. And I even was able to do pushups with the bosu ball as part of ultimate burpees. That made me pretty happy.

My treadmill work is still a struggle too. It’s both a physical and a mental struggle. I do have my pain from time to time, but I’m also terrified that my calf still isn’t fully healed and if I push it too much I’ll injure myself again. So I’m trying to be easy on myself and not stress out that I’m still not where I thought I’d be. I’m hoping that I can increase my treadmill speed at the beginning of the new year, but I’m not going to hurt myself over that goal.

This week is going to be a short workout week for me due to Thanksgiving, but I’ll be getting my 3 workouts in for sure (including my new tradition of a workout on Thanksgiving morning)!

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff

Tagged fitness, goals, Orangetheory, planning, scheduling, workout

Peak Performance Week (or Pushing Myself To The Max)

Posted on November 16, 2015 | 1 comment

It’s been a crazy few weeks at Orangetheory lately! First there was Hell Week. Then there was Recovery Week (which didn’t feel like a recovery but more like a normal week). And this past week was Peak Performance Week.

We had a Peak Performance Week back at the beginning of the summer, and I had a pretty great time with it. I got some PRs, challenged myself, and felt like I had set some good benchmarks to try to beat. Not all of the challenges were the same as the beginning of the summer, but it’s nice to have something to compare to. Especially when that last time it was right before I tore my calf muscle. I was able to see how close to fully recovered I am.

Monday’s challenge was a 10 minute run/walk for distance. The goal for all the runners was to get at least a mile done in 10 minutes. So technically the goal for me as a power walker was to get half a mile done. I know I can do half a mile in 10 minutes, so I set my own goal of trying to get to .6 miles in 10 minutes.

I did most of the work at 6% incline and as much as I wanted to increase my speed, my hips and calf weren’t having it. So while I didn’t get to my personal goal, I think I did pretty great.

Wednesday’s challenge was something that I was really looking forward to. It was the 1 mile challenge. When I did this over the summer, I had a PR with my mile. While that was amazing, it was very disappointing for me how I wasn’t able to translate that mile time into my 5K (and yes, I know that the PR was pre-injury and the race was post-injury). I knew that my mile time wasn’t going to be a PR. But I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do better than I did at my race.

I spent most of my mile alternating between 3.4 and 3.5 miles and hour. In the last minute, I bumped up the speed as much as I could. And when I was done, I was so happy with myself.

This is about 30 seconds slower than my mile PR (which isn’t that much) and about 50 seconds faster than my mile time from race day. I needed this boost because I had still been feeling a bit low from my race. I know that somehow I could have done better, but I’m not sure what I would have had to do. So showing myself on the treadmill that I’m not as far back from fully recovered as I thought really made me feel great.

Friday was a pretty exciting day for me. First of all, it was my 150th workout of 2015! That’s amazing to me! Also, Friday’s challenge was the 2000 meter row. I’ve had so much rowing lately that I knew I could do some great work on this challenge. My PR for my 1000 meter row is 4:58.9, so my goal for my 2000 meter row was anything under 10 minutes.

Since I knew the row would totally take it out of me, I chose to do that first instead of the treadmill like I usually do. I set my rower to count down from 2000 meters (it would also stop the clock once I reached that distance) and tried to not look at the screen. I counted the strokes in my head as a distraction and once people next to me were finishing I knew I must be getting close. I rowed as hard and fast as I ever had for those last 100 meters and when the clock stopped, I almost couldn’t believe my time.

I was a little more than 16 seconds faster than my goal time! And since distance rows are a weakness of mine, to be able to do this was amazing! The only downside was that after the row we had to go on the treadmill and my hip gave me one of the electric shocks I get from time to time and my calf muscle was feeling like it was pulling and tearing. So I got off the treadmill and did the rest of my cardio on the bike. I wasn’t happy to be on the bike, but I needed to do that to keep my body from being in pain and damaging itself.

Overall, I would consider this Peak Performance Week a huge victory for me. While not everything was a PR, I proved to myself that while I’m still recovering I’m getting closer and closer to where I was pre-injury.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged fitness, goals, Orangetheory, pain, progress, rowing, treadmill, workout

Surviving Hell Week (or I’m A Liar)

Posted on November 2, 2015 | 2 comments

Remember how last week I said that I knew I’d only get 3 workouts in for the week because of my schedule?

I totally lied.

I went into Hell Week with the intention of only doing 3 workouts until on Monday I found out that it was 4 Hell Week Workouts to earn the shirt (I thought it was 4). So I decided to suck it up and do 4 workouts to get my shirt.

Monday’s workout was Dead Man’s Row. I knew this would be the 23 minute row day, and I was terrified. I made sure that my rowing segment was first so I could get it done with, and then I’ll do my best with the floor work.

I’m still getting used to the 7:30am workouts so I was pretty exhausted going in. And doing that long row didn’t perk me up. But there was a plan with push rows and recovery rows, and I did my best to follow along with that.

I didn’t have much of a goal for my row. I just wanted to beat my row of about 3300 meters from last year. And when my 23 minutes were up, I was pretty darn excited to see that I did 4142 meters!

I don’t remember much about the floor workout after that except that one of the floor moves was a low row on the straps and I felt that that was extremely mean to do when we had a 23 minute row.

Tuesday (the extra day I added) was The Hills Run Red. I thought it was be a really tough hill day for me, but it ended up not being too bad. All the treadmill segments were on inclines, but they were all sprints that were about a minute or less. Between sprints we had to go on the rower (I wasn’t happy about 2 rowing days in a row), and I managed to do 3000 meters on the rower then! While I was happy that I’m getting better and better at the rower, I was ready for a few rower-free days.

Wednesday was The Silence of the Lambs (or Legs depending on where you read it). Yes, this was a leg day and there were a bunch of squats and lunges to do. And yes, there was more rowing!

After 3 workouts in a row, I was ready for a rest day so I was happy taking Thursday off. But I was back on Friday for day 4 (my first 4 workout week since my calf injury!). That day was The Final Destination and again it involved the rower! There were 2 rowing segments (400 and 800 meters) so those felt almost like sprints. And the treadmill had 4 segments at either .13 miles or .25 miles so that wasn’t too bad.

The floor that day was crazy. It was a single 23 minute floor block and it was so tough! There were lunges, squats, burpees, full body pull ups, and speed skaters. I had to take several breaks in those 23 minutes, but I got the entire routine done so that was good enough for me.

Doing 4 days of Hell Week exhausted me, but I proved to myself that while my calf might not be totally healed, I can get back to 4 workouts in a week if I have the time. I won’t be doing that this week because of my race, but I’m going to try to do that again soon so I can get as many workouts in this year as possible!

I seriously had the best time with Hell Week this year. Last year it terrified me for a couple of reasons. First, I was still pretty new to Orangetheory so I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle the workouts. I proved that I can totally do it. And last year Hell Week was the first time I did 3 workouts in a row. Again, I can totally do it. While I was worried about how I would do in the workouts this year, I got to have more fun than stress. I loved pushing myself to new limits and seeing the awesome costumes that the coaches wore.

Yes, in that second picture I’m standing on top of a rower to be almost as tall as Coach Bruce.

I’m actually excited for Hell Week for next year. I know that there will be more challenges before next Hell Week, but I like having that as a standard thing to hold myself to. If there is another 23 minute row, I know what distance I want to beat. I know how I felt in the workouts this year and I want to push myself more next year. I’ve got a year to train for Hell Week 2016, and I’m already starting to get ready!

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged challenge, fitness, goals, Halloween, Orangetheory, rowing, workout

How Is This Year Almost Over? (or Doing A Check In On My Goals)

Posted on October 28, 2015 | 1 comment

I was on the phone with a friend the other day and it came up that this year is over in 2 months. I know I say this every year but it’s crazy how fast the year is going by! It feels like my birthday was just a few weeks ago!

I’m not the type of person to do quarterly check ins with my goals (so many friends are trying to get me to do this and I’m thinking about maybe doing it next year), but with 2 months left I did want to see how I’m doing with what I set as goals for this year.

My first goal was to do 175 workouts at Orangetheory this year. Not counting the workout I’ll be doing today, I’m at 142 workouts. I’m very much on track to hit my goal, but I need to get back to 4 workouts a week soon so I make sure that I get there. But it’s very possible and I’m really happy with myself that I’ve gotten this close so far.

My next goal was having at least 4 home cooked dinners a week. This one I’m not doing so great with. If you could microwaved dinners as home cooked (I don’t), then I’m doing amazing. But I’ve really gotten out of my cooking trend that I was in for so long and I’m struggling to get back in to. A lot of that has to do with working one of my jobs on the weekends when I used to do meal prepping or knowing that I won’t be at home many nights a week. This is a scheduling issue that I’m always working on and I know that I need to make it a better priority in life.

Next on my list was getting down to 2 main day jobs. This one I actually did! I now have my box office from home job (which I’ve been at for over a year) as one of those main jobs and my data entry job with my old boss as my other main day job. I also have my sporadic jobs (babysitting, the film festival, my weekend box office job with an old boss), but I’m definitely down to 2 main day jobs. I have to admit that I’m shocked that I accomplished this one since it was the hardest one in my mind. I’m now looking at some other day jobs with more flexibility (my main box office job isn’t as flexible as I’d like it to be), but I’m very happy for now with the 2 main jobs I have and I’m super grateful to have them both.

Getting into an improv class was checked off the list last week when I started at UCB and I’ll be doing those classes for 6 more weeks. Again, I’m super shocked that I got this done because I’ve been wanting to do it for a while and haven’t had the chance or money to do so.

I haven’t been able to travel a lot this year. I’ve gone to San Diego a bunch and I went to Napa earlier in the year, but I was really hoping to do another New York trip this fall. There were schedule and financial issues with doing that trip, but it’s looking like it might be in the works for 2016.

And my final goal (as it always has been) was to keep blogging. I’ve had people ask me how long I can keep up blogging 5 days a week every week and I’m happy that I haven’t quit doing that yet. There may come a day in the future that I miss a day or that I decide to go down in the number of posts a week. But I’m still happy with my schedule as it is and it seems that you all like reading my posts too.

So that’s my almost the end of the year check in with my 2015 goals. They aren’t all done yet, but I’m making huge steps and progress so far and I feel like on December 31st I will be looking back and realizing that I got most or all of my goals accomplished for the year.

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Posted in Celebrations, Food, Fun Stuff, Tough Stuff

Tagged cooking, goals, improv, job, Orangetheory, progress, travel, UCB

1 Year Of Going Orange (or Anniversary Celebrations)

Posted on June 8, 2015 | Comments Off

I was headed to my Orangetheory workout on Monday when I got a notification of an email from Orangetheory. My first thought was that maybe class was cancelled due to some weird reason or the parking garage was closed and they were giving us a heads up.

But instead, this is what it said:

It’s true, June 1st marked 1 year since my very first Orangetheory workout! One year ago I did a workout that made it tough for me to walk for several days after! I wondered at the time if I would ever do the workout again or if I could even do it on a semi-regular basis. But I decided to take a chance and see what could happen.

One year and over 150 workouts later, I’m much stronger and healthier. When I started I was using mainly 8 or 10 pound weights. Now, I’m using 15 pounds weights for most things (and 20 pound weights for deadlifts and occasionally squats). When I started I was going 3.0 miles an hour. I remember when I started going 3.1 miles an hour and how proud I was of myself because that meant that I could do a 5K in an hour again. Now, I’m at 3.4 miles an hour on the treadmill and I’m hoping that within a month I will start doing 3.5 miles an hour a little bit in my workout.

I can’t believe that a year has passed since that first workout. In one way, it seems like just a month or so ago that I struggled through that workout. But at the same time, it’s hard remembering what life was like where I didn’t spend almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday working out.

I was on a high for my Monday workout knowing that it was my 1 year anniversary at Orangetheory. I really wanted to try getting my treadmill faster for that workout, but my body just wasn’t having it. But I was just happy to spend my 1 year anniversary at Orangetheory doing a workout there. That seemed right to me.

Not only was it my 1 year anniversary with Orangetheory, Friday marked 1 year since the grand opening of the location I go to (I started before the grand opening since I went to a pre-opening bloggers event)!

All day on Friday they had special things at the studio to celebrate.

Since I was working during the day, I missed out on the taco truck. But they did have snacks and drinks after my 4pm workout. And during my workout they had a live DJ doing the music for the class (the DJ classes are a pretty regular thing but they usually aren’t at the times that I go).

Everyone was in a very festive mood at the workout and that helped make the workout go by a little faster.

And since this week started off my second year at Orangetheory, I figured I should get 4 workouts in for the week instead of 3. I’m hoping that 4 workouts will soon be the norm and I’m working on finding exactly when in my schedule I can do them. But this past week it worked out well to go on Saturday after my box office shift was done.

The Saturday workout was a bit tough, but that was mainly because we didn’t rotate between the treadmill and the floor until the halfway point. Even though I’m more used to the extended treadmill time, I still don’t love having 24 minutes on the treadmill without a break on the floor doing weights (or when it’s a run/row and you break up the treadmill time with rowing).

I think that my 4 workout week was a great way to start my 2nd year at Orangetheory. I’m impressed that I got over 150 workouts in for my first year (especially since I wasn’t doing 4 workouts a week until a few months in). My goal for 2015 is to do 175 workouts, and I am on track for that. But maybe I can beat that goal for year 2 of Orangetheory!

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Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged anniversary, celebration, fitness, goals, Orangetheory, workout

Another Evening Of Mentees (or Advice and Socializing)

Posted on May 21, 2015 | 3 comments

My second mentee only meeting with my Women in Film mentoring group was this past week. I offered to host again because it’s pretty convenient for me to have the meetings in my house. Plus it seems to be centrally located for the rest of the group.

Only about half of our group was able to make it, but I was still excited to catch up with those who were going to be there. I took the opportunity to use my new serving dishes I got from my grandparents and they were perfect!

Since the group was smaller this time than in the past, we only spent about an hour catching up on the goals that we have gotten done and what our goals for our next meeting will be. It still inspires me every time when I hear what everyone else is doing with their careers. I’m so lucky that I was matched with this group who are all very motivated and are dedicated to getting as much out of this mentoring group as possible. This is exactly what I was hoping to get out of doing a second mentoring circle.

I hate that I feel like I’m trash talking my old mentoring group. I’m not. But with that group our mentors weren’t as tough on us about attending meetings and they never told us to meet on our own between the meetings with them. And the other women in the group were mostly absent from the meetings. I really only got to know 2 of the other women because they were the ones who showed up for the meetings.

After our hour of catching up, we ate some dessert and started to me less formal and more social as a group. It’s not that we haven’t been social in the past, but this time we really relaxed and started to share fun and silly stories. I got to know the ladies much better and I feel that we got to bond a bit more as a group. I’m hoping that if we try to stay to time limits with our personal catchup and goals discussion that at future mentee only meetings we can continue to be more social and not just about business. It was a really nice touch and I think that everyone else enjoyed that too.

We will have another meeting with our mentors next month (the date isn’t set yet), and I’m hoping to have fun news to update everyone with. Since everyone else always seems to have such great news and stories to tell everyone, I feel almost a bit competitive and want to have some awesome news of my own.

So I’m trying to work on my career much harder than I have in the past just so I can feel like I can keep up with everyone. But I think that is one of the reasons you get into a mentoring group like this. You get motivated by everyone else to better yourself and you have a great group to lean on and ask for help.

I’m working on some ideas about what will push me farther in my career, and I’ll be sharing one of those things with you all tomorrow!

3 Comments

Posted in Acting, Food, Fun Stuff

Tagged acting, dinner, goals, grandparents, mentoring, social, Women in Film

Not Being So Hard On Myself (or Missing A Workout Goal This Month)

Posted on April 27, 2015 | Comments Off

This past week of workouts weren’t my best, but I tried. Last week wasn’t my best week either, and I don’t like that these bad weeks are becoming a trend.

I’m pretty sure that a lot of this pain is coming from the fact that I cannot take my strong painkillers right now. I don’t take them that often, but I probably take them a couple of times a month when I have really bad hip pain. But now, I just have to make my mild painkillers and push through the pain.

I’m also continuing to make sure that I’m getting 10,000 steps in every day, and when I’m having a bad hip day (and not able to take my usual painkillers), that makes my bad hip days last longer.

Even with the bad days, I still managed to get in my 3 workouts (what I consider to be my minimum number of workouts in a week) and I managed to still make progress.

I’m now always at 3.4 miles an hour on the treadmill (except for when we have walking recoveries which are supposed to be at 3.0 miles an hour). I’m doing that same speed even if I’m at 15% incline. Considering that when I started less than a year ago I was at 3.0 miles an hour, I’m pretty darn happy with myself. I’m still hoping to be .2 or .3 miles an hour faster by my next 5K (which will be in November), so I’m trying to figure out when I should bump up my speed another .1.

I’m also pushing myself with my weights more. I don’t always get to use the 15 pound weights, but that’s usually because I can’t find them (those aren’t at all the weight stations so sometimes all the 15 pound sets are being used). But I have noticed that the 12 pound weights are feeling too light now. Just a month or two ago, I was struggling with those weights!

And I’m continuing to improve on my wattage on my rowing. I can sometimes get it up to where we are supposed to be, but my hips have a tough time maintaining that for more that 100 meters. For the longer rows, I just try to stay above 100 watts and most of the time I’m getting that done.

While I am making progress even during my bad days, this past weekend I did realize that I am going to miss a workout goal for the month of April. I had a goal at the beginning of the year that I would do 175 workouts for the year. I have an app on my phone that helps me track my progress and to let me know when I’m getting what I need done each month.

This month (after I work out on Monday and Wednesday) I will have gotten 96% of what I needed to do this month done. I can’t add an extra workout in this week, so I’ll have to be ok with 96%. There were weeks when I wanted to add a 4th workout in, but it just wasn’t possible.

But I know that I’ve got plenty of months left this year to make up for what I didn’t do this month. I can do more than 100% in May to make up for it and I feel confident in being able to reach my goal by the end of this year.

So here’s to hoping that while I might have another bad hip week this week, I still can make progress and continue to kick butt in my workouts.

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged fitness, goals, hip issues, Orangetheory, progress, workout

Meeting My Mentoring Circle (or Being In The Minority)

Posted on February 19, 2015 | 4 comments

Last night was the first meeting of my new Women In Film mentoring circle. I was a little nervous going in because of my experience with my last mentoring circle. While I really loved getting to know the women in my last circle who showed up, out of 10 women only 3 of us regularly attending the meetings. And while I understand that we all live busy and crazy lives, it was still disappointing.

One of my new mentors is a manager and the other is a producer. They were both so nice at the meeting and their stories and experiences were amazing to hear about.

After our mentors introduced themselves, we went around introducing ourselves. In my last mentoring circle, almost all the mentees were actors. There were some writers, but most of them were also actors (I think there was only 1 writer who wasn’t an actor as well). But in this group, there is only 1 other actor! Everyone else has such a variety of jobs. There are writers, directors, producers, and even someone who helps entertainment industry companies rent office space!

Not only did all the other mentees have a wide range of jobs, they were all super supportive and enthusiastic about the mentoring circle and what we can accomplish as a group! My old circle was supportive, but we were looking more toward our mentors as guidance to what our group should do. This time, we are taking charge of things and are planning our own mentee meetings between the meetings with our mentors (I’m actually in charge of organizing our mentee meeting).

I left the meeting feeling super positive and excited to see what the next year will bring for me and the other women in my mentoring circle. I really feeling like I was put into an incredible group that will help me reach my goals (and of course I will help them as well).

I’m not trying to put down my last mentoring circle. I learned a lot from my mentors and the other women who regularly attended the meetings. But I really felt like there was so much more that I could have gotten out of that group than I did. And maybe part of that is my fault that I did not ask to see if we could do more. But now I’m super motivated to make this next year super productive and I know that this mentoring circle will help me reach my goals.

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff

Tagged goals, mentoring, Women in Film

New Workout Gadgets And Records (or Improving On My Workouts)

Posted on January 12, 2015 | 18 comments

This past week brought some fun things to my Orangetheory workouts. The first thing was at my Monday workout.

Since I started at Orangetheory, there has always been heart rate monitors. This is part of the reason why I love Orangetheory. The heart monitors that have been used in the past are by Polar. I owned my own strap and every time I worked out, I got a pod (the device that hooks on to the strap) from the front desk. The pods belonged to Orangetheory and had to be turned in after each class.

But on Monday, we all got a nice present waiting for us at the front desk.

We got new heart rate monitors! This is the OTBeat system. It uses Bluetooth to connect in class and you can even use it for workouts outside of class (which is perfect since the battery in my other heart rate monitor still needs replacing). And now I don’t have to get a pod from the front desk (or remember to turn it back in) each workout!

The only possible glitch with the new heart rate monitor for me is the calorie count. It’s saying that I’m burning about 200-300 calories less than the old system did. And when I use the app on my phone with the heart rate monitor (while I’m in class), it says I do burn those extra 200-300 calories. I’ve told the management at my Orangetheory and we are trying to figure out why this is happening. I’m not sure if I should trust what the class calorie burn is or the app calorie burn is. Hopefully this will be resolved this week.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to do the Monday Challenge this past week. It was a 1/4 mile on the treadmill at 10%, but you couldn’t hold on to the treadmill while you did it. Since I have so many balance and walking straight issues, it was more important for me to hold on and not fall than to try the Monday Challenge.

Other than not being able to do the Monday Challenge, I had a great workout.

Wednesday I pushed myself to some new limits with my weights. The new OTBeat system shows how long you have been in the orange and red zones (the zones that help your body burn calories post-workout), so I wanted to see if I could get more time in those zones. In the past, you only knew how long you were in those zones after the workout, but now that I can see how close I am to my goals throughout the workout, I feel extra motivated to push myself farther and farther.

And pushing myself was the theme of my Friday workout. For the treadmill block, we had some distance races. The first and last 7 minutes of the treadmill block were for distance. The first 7 minutes, I got to .401 miles. My goal was .4 miles, so getting that little extra was super motivating. When we had the next 7 minute race, I made myself go even faster than last time (so much easier to do that on a treadmill where it forces me to go faster if I increase the speed on the machine).

Going faster (and at 6% incline instead of 3% which is the norm), was painful at times, but all I really wanted to do is to go for the full 7 minutes without taking a break. And somehow, I managed to do that.

When I looked at the treadmill to see how far I went, I was in shock.

That’s so much better than the first time, and I was exhausted this time from doing the first 7 minute race and the intervals we had between the 2 races.

Honestly, the rest of my workout after that was a bit of a blur. It was a blur of pain and happiness that I was able to go so much farther than I ever expected.

This coming week, I’m going to be calling Kaiser to try to get an appointment with a potential hip surgeon. I know what my old surgeon had as a plan for me, but since he isn’t at Kaiser anymore and that plan was created almost 8 years ago, I want to know what else is possible for me. My goal is to find a way to be able to walk faster without pain and to perhaps find more ways to delay the 3 surgeries that I was told that I need. Seeing how far I can push myself when I’m in pain in a workout has really motivated me to work with a new doctor to make my future workouts even better.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Weight Loss

Tagged goals, hip issues, Orangetheory, success, workout

Tag Archives: goals

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