My favorite is Nothing, just Focusing on my outward breath, necessary daily in the AM and PM. (For how to’s I recommend Pema Chodron and Jon Kabat-Zinn)
I also do a Druid Prayer Bead meditation 3 times a week.
And when my mind is too busy for even that, I put on my Meditation Podcasts on my Ipod and lay down.
That is just what works for me.
So I am really feeling the neglected scar tissue break down this week, most likely from the new stretches and increased exercise. So I decided to finally read up a bit on the grey area that was my first ten years of living with the big C. I was a much changed woman, but not yet really taking full responsibility for my own health. Not that I would have done anything different, the doctors I trusted were obviously trustworthy as I am writing this without the use of a medium. It is just that I allowed myself to be as ignorant as possible, and used denial instead of self-empowerment to get through that decade. Anyway here is a link to how I got my breasts back (bi-lateral with radiation) and helps me understand some of my current challenges with swimming.
http://www.breastreconstruction.ca/living_latflap.htm
This dovetails on last nights entry because of the fact that this son who is swimming and supporting my training knows well what it is like to come back from a life altering health crisis. He walks that 5K and swims, etc on a leg whose lower portion is supported on steel.
I am also including this note to remind myself I do need to work harder to get where I want to go, and yup, pain is part of the process. A clear picture of the obstacles is not an excuse to quit making the journey, it is just a map of the best way around for my travels.
My day started right with meditation. I forget sometimes how much of a difference that makes in my day. Still, even after meditation, I was a bit bluish.
It really is about doing the work, not just talking the dream, believing the dream, and visualizing the dream; it is about getting your hands dirty, taking the risks and doing the work. It’s about being embarrassed and plowing through anyway.
Good night star catchers!
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And just like in any good book just when you think there is hope on the horizon, it gets worse. (Which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened to our heroes right after the Tummeler quote I used last time) And this is the part where our heroine loses her hope (but not her determination)
So here is our new homework assignment
2 Lap Kick Board warm up, focus on breathing and consistently moving.
4 Laps free style with no, or minimal (30 seconds or less) break
1 Lap Kickboard
3 Laps free style
1 Lap Kickboard
2 Laps free style
1 lap Kickboard
1 Lap free style
Cool down
2 laps with kickboard focusing on breathing. It will be little extra hard here because you will be tired. Thats ok, try to push through it.
This more advanced homework, I suppose, is because now we have two new people in the class who already actually swim, one of whom is training for the same triathlon I am, only she isn’t new to it. So now the new girls set an even higher bar than my Daughter-in-law did and I totally wear the dunce cap.
Tonight completion was impossible in the time I had available. It was taking me 45 minutes to an hour to do the old homework and was very winded and exhausted when I was done.
Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae,
Who ate a monstrous whale?
She thought she could,
She said she would,
So she started in right at the tail.
And everyone said,"You’re much too small,"
But that didn’t bother Melinda at all,
She took little bites and she chewed very slow,
Just like a little girl should…
…and eighty-nine years later she ate that whale
Because she said she would."
So pretty much my life is like everyone else. I am just at the part of the story where it gets good and I do have valiant friends. Some are the close"real" kind like my son Rick, his wife Dawn, Sara, Pat, Amie, Ann, Angela and some are outer circle friends like my Rennaisance friends, some are lifetime friends like "Donny" and Egon, and some are my "imaginary" friends like Tummeler, the Inklings, and Melinda Mae. Hope is restored, I cannot fail with this kind of army with me, so I better get back to the battle.
Okay who actually sang that song, I remember all the words. It could be my theme song.
I know I can look it up with a few key strokes on the internet, but I would rather mull it over for awhile, listen to the song in my head or pull it from memory. Ah, there it is, tucked away with all those other 1970’s memories I have been dusting off and sifting through; it was an Irish singer Gilbert O’Sullivan.
Anyway, been singing it in my head all night while I went to swim, alone. First lap was done with my kick-board but face in water and no break at half lap!
Woot!!!!!
I finished my swim class homework. Going again in the morning so just up long enough for the neighborhood teen-agers to stop setting off firecrackers (which set off my dogs).
Two kinds of people, those who make their dreams happen and those that make excuses.
Working on being the first kind so went to practice tonight after work even though it was not what I thought I wanted to do. I had a good dozen legitimate excuses running through my head, but I really want to do this triath thing, so I ignored the excuses and showed up to the hard work.
I finally did a full kick-board breathing lap without breaking the breathing rhythm. Face in water the whole way blowing out the air, except with the right head turn to breathe in more air. My form sucked and I had a headache from fighting off the panic.
But I did it. One more step forward.
Noticed it two days ago actually, while pulling myself out of the pool to patter over to the bathroom. I do that a lot with exercise, go to the bathroom I mean, and how that will work with doing a triathlon is currently a mystery, potentially Depends. Anyway on a much better note, I have only had exactly four swim lessons, will have been training for less than a month (started June 1) and can now fit my hips through the ladder at pool side without angling to make them fit.
The joy this brings may mean nothing to someone who has always been athletic or thin, but to me it is a pretty big deal. My buttocks and thighs have been squeezed into opera seats, plane seats, office chairs with arms, ladder sides, etc for most of the last ten years. These hips had one or two reprieves from their out-sized existence when I would drop near or below 200 lbs, but overall it has been a decade where everything I sit or climb on (especially with sides) has been a reminder of how I don’t fit. I find myself entering and leaving the pool more from the deep-end ladder now than the shallow end stairs, just because I can.
In the actual swimming portion of the training program, I still can’t consistently make a half lap, never mind a whole lap, with my face in the water. I can make it about a third of the way without having to switch to backstroke. The more tired I get, the harder it is to breathe out under water, but I push a minimum of two strokes past what I think I can do, and I always complete my homework. I will take my victories where I can find them. Phil Veatch, my trainer says I haven’t lost endurance, I am just working harder when I am in the water (keeping my butt up, you know tightening the core, constant arm motion) and that is why my stamina seems less. I will take his word on it as I want to believe this to be true.
I trained at the pool this morning and I walked a little over two miles as laps at the mall this afternoon (for those reading outside Arizona, it reaches 100 degrees before noon and stays hot. It is currently 110 degrees at 5PM, hence mall laps) Need to do another mile with the dogs tonight, but will depend on how fast the temperature drops. The Endomondo and My Fitness Tracker apps on my new droid (thanks again Rick and Dawn!) have been awesome helps in watching diet and activity.
Yup, today I am practicing my truest gift. The gift I excel at above writing, or talking, or even baking. All this training for athletics has left my self-confidence shaken. I needed to try something tonight in which I am the master. I needed to completely succeed.
And succeed I have. Tonight I am practicing procrastination, have had this blog space open for over an hour while I checked the Rowling update site (yup, I am a Potter fan), read all the new posts on the "Fans of Noank" facebook page, played a couple moves in Lexulous and now it is to late to blog about a rather uneventful day in my ongoing triathlete training. It is time to do my evening stretches and go to bed.