Aloha Hawaii

This post is being written from the beautiful island Kauai! We left LAX yesterday morning about an hour late after minor airplane servicing and being bumped from our selected seats.  It looks like they overbooked the plane so instead of E and I sitting together at the window and middle seat I had reserved, we sat on either side of an aisle. Not the end of the world, but it did mean I didn't get any sleep as I was planning on using E as a pillow.

Photo taken by our family friend and awesome photographer N

After we landed, we collected our rental cars and experienced the hot Hawaiian sun for the first time. The UV was so high you could feel yourself burning BBQ style and I had to bust out the sunscreen. Our rental house is absolutely gorgeous, E and I are staying in the downstairs master suite with a big jacuzzi tub, a little balcony, and a lush outdoor patio. There's no AC, which I was prepared for, but all the rooms have fans and Hawaiian windows which open half the room.

After unpacking our 5 million pairs of shoes and assorted tropical clothes, we were famished and walked to a local place for dinner. Two maitai's, one pina colada, and a crapload of food later, we  stopped at the local market for some basic essentials and realized just how expensive things are.  Holy cow! 7 dollars for a small box of cereal??

Since the sun was setting, E and I went down to Hanalei bay to check out the sunset. Our friend N was there getting some amazing photos and we stayed until it was dark. It's an absolutely beautiful bay, the water is almost completely still and the sand is soft and clean. 

Another photo by the amazing N

This morning E and I did our Insanity work out and then went back down to the bay. We spent a couple hours swimming in the crystal clear water and sunning ourselves on the beach. This place is pretty much paradise and I'm so looking forward to the rest of our time here :)

Carry On, Carry On

 

 Fun. - Carry On

The more I listen to this fabulous song, the more I love it. Enjoy!

Insanity: Day 40 To The Max

After that lovely, mostly pain free recovery week, E and I have finally found out what it really means to do the Insanity work out. Holy balls, the pain! Each max work out is an hour long and involves grueling moves that you shouldn't be doing with any normal human body. They have level 3 drills, yes, LEVEL 3, which feel roughly like 1000 push ups per work out. You supposedly burn over 1000 calories per work out and let me tell you, you feel every single one.

In better news, I think the work out may finally be starting to make a visible difference! You can really see it on E who is losing any semblance of his "love handles" and whose stomach is looking much more flat and washboard-y.  I definitely still have both my love handles and belly, but E is insistent that I'm toning a bit even if neither of us are really losing weight yet. I wish it was a little more visible since we're going to Hawaii so soon but I'll take what I can get for now!

Insanity: Recovery Week

I am so very glad to finally be in the recovery week! The first month of Insanity was intense and my body is so in need of a break. After just one recovery work out, it's pretty obvious that we probably should have done the recovery disc for a couple weeks before actually doing Insanity. It's supposed to be a low key, don't stress yourself work out and it still makes me sweat and has things I can't do. They actually consider level one drills to be a recovery exercise and I can't successfully complete even one!

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For those who don't know, level one drills involve dropping down to plank position, doing four push ups, running in plank position 8 times, jumping your legs in, jumping up with arms raised, and repeat. Since I can't do push ups, this exercise is brutal and had I known it was considered "recovery" I would have approached this whole thing differently.  The routine also has a lot of core and balance work (hence the name core cardio and balance lol) which is the kind of stuff that hurts the next day. Power squats, balancing on one leg while lifting and flailing the other, lots of spinny and lifting arm work and such.

I'm thinking that two weeks of this work out would, gentle and easy as it should be, work us up to the full Insanity. Instead, we're a month in, my plantar faciatis is fully inflamed in both feet, and my dumb ass went and slipped in the shower and smacked my head against our little portable heater.  It's still a big sore knot 3 days later and hurts like crazy when I bounce around doing Insanity. It literally feels like I'm pounding on the bruise on my head,  shoulder, and leg, while aggravating my feet as usual. E is pretty sure I should be doing Insanity and asks me at the beginning of each work out if I want to run on the treadmill instead. Since I've committed to this crap, the answer is always no.

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What's even worse,  I blabbed to my mother about my embarrassing slip, hoping for a little sympathy and humor, and instead she told me I must have slipped because I'm too fat. Because, you know, only old people and fat people slip on wet tile. It couldn't have been because E had showered and left the slick tile floor wet, and I was rushing to get in and out because my burgers were on the grill. No. I must have slipped because I'm fat. Right.

So to recap: Month one of Insanity is complete! The recovery work out is still hard. My feet continue to suck. I slipped in the shower because I'm fat. Even after a month of Insanity. According to my loving mother. Right.

An Agile Girl

Yesterday was the last class of Milou's second agility course. Unlike her obedience classes, she doesn't graduate and begin a new class learning a new set of skills. Instead, she remains with the same group of dogs until she becomes sufficiently skilled enough in the basic tasks to move up to the next level. This means basic mastery of the weave poles, dog walk, A frame, tire, chute, and tunnel. As of yet, we haven't started the teeter or the pause table.

Below is a beginning agility course for a little dog. It has a very low dog walk and A frame, 8 inch jumps, and what looks like beginning weave poles. Milou is jumping 8 inch jumps right now too but she'll have to jump higher ones soon. She also has to run the dog walk and A frame at full height which probably scares me more than it scares her. It's all very complex and people take it waaaay more seriously than we do.

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Now Milou's favorite obstacle, hands down, is the tunnel. She would run back and forth through that thing all day long if you let her, and a few weeks ago she completely blew me off mid class to run in and out of it over and over while everyone had a good laugh. Apparently as dogs get better at agility, all the work you put into making them work an obstacle when they didn't want to is put into preventing them from running those obstacles when they're not supposed to.

In a lot of ways, the class is actually incredibly inconvenient. It's smack in the middle of my Saturday so I can't plan anything else and the park has possibly the world's worst parking. All summer long it's been filled with people having massive family reunions with what has to be every family member and unsupervised child in existence. They triple park in the fire lane, leave trash all over and let their kids run into our agility courses and right up to our working dogs.

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Last class a little girl, probably not even 4, literally ran up to two tethered barking dogs and started yelling at them and waving her arms in their faces. I'm not sure how her parents didn't freak the fuck out with their baby's arms that close to gnashing teeth but they were watching and didn't appear to be too concerned. I probably had a small heart attack trying to get her away from two otherwise friendly aussies without turning around and killing her parents. Our course is roped off with cones and clearly off limits so I'm baffled as to what would make them think it's okay to come in. Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to the family reunions summer ending. Plus, while the class is reasonably priced, it's starting to add up in a major way after three obedience classes and now three agility classes.  

Even after all this work and money, I don't think Milou and I would ever compete in professional agility. People take this sport very seriously and devote their lives and money to it. But she seems to have such a good time that I keep signing her up for more sessions. She tackles each run with a massive grin on her face and literally bounces in between obstacles in what has got to be the most excited run ever. Even her classmates comment on how much fun she is to watch. Plus, a tired dog is a good dog and she definitely comes home tired :)

Insanity: Day 23

Today was day 23 and E and I are still getting our rears kicked by Insanity. I feel like our endurance has increased, E's more so than mine, but it's still tough to complete each work out without wanting to die. Thankfully we get a recovery week next week where we'll be doing a gentler work out that I'm very much looking forward to.

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My biggest hurdles are probably the push ups and the jumping, which comprises at least 50% of Insanity. Even at my most physically fit, push ups have never been my strong suit and Insanity calls for standard push ups, moving push ups, push up jacks, v push ups, and weird knees bent, crunched up push ups. I've been trying to substitute them with girly push ups, push ups using a piece of furniture, or holding a high plank position while E bobs up and down all glisteny and manly. 

The jumping isn't actually hard to do, but I've got pretty bad plantar fasciitis and usually wear orthotics in all my shoes. I've been experimenting with different shoe/orthotic combinations for working out and somewhere along the way picked the wrong pair of shoes for a couple days. Now my muscles and tendons are all inflamed and ticked off and every landing feels like I'm jamming steel stakes into my arches. It hasn't been fun and I can't stop the program to give my feet a rest.  I'm hoping they get adjusted on their own over the recovery week or E is going to keep giving me grief over my crappy performance.

Play with me!

Tintin tries to entice Milou to play with him. Clearly it's not going all that well lol. Normally she's down for some rough housing but when it's hot out and she's already spent a couple hours playing, this girl needs a break.

Insanity: Day 11

Woo, 11 days down only a billion more to go! The work outs are still intense although I'd like to think that I'm pushing through them a little better. I still want to die about two minutes into the warm up, but my butt kicks are more butt kicky and my high knees are starting to get higher than my ankles, although they're not quite above my hips where they should be. I'm kind of thinking that as soon as I adjust to these work outs in the next couple weeks (ie getting through without taking too many unscheduled collapses breaks) that the work out will shift into high gear and we'll be dying all over again.

Thus far, E and I have been working out religiously in our living room, often barefoot on the wood floor, and it's starting to become pretty uncomfortable. We're tentatively committing to Insanity for at least another 60 days after this round, maybe even 120 days, so I went out today and bought us some proper shoes and work out mats. We are supposed to be wearing "good" cross trainers but since I'm not sure how many cycles we'll do and didn't want spend $200, I settled on some comfortable but inexpensive New Balances that should do the trick. 

Hopefully these will make my feet hurt less, though they're not really Cross Trainers

E's Cross Trainers, hopefully they fit!

I also got one giant single person exercise mat to practice with so we can see if we like it before buying another. We do a lot of jumping on the ground to do push ups and exercises on our hands and knees and I think it'll be more comfortable than the wood floor. It might even be big enough for us to both use, but I doubt it since we can't be too close together while working out.