I forgot to mention – at the Nike, a guy cut in front of me, and I went down HARD – though I did roll. So I have two beee-you-tee-ful bruises, one of my left hip (accentuates the cellulite thank you very much) and one spanning my left elbow. I didn’t actually go “down” on the elbow – more on the outside of my upper arm – but the bruise travels down below the elbow.
Today (this evening) is crossfit – I’ll go. H is leaving for a couple days’ worth of director training in San Jose, then we are to Tahoe for some R&R. Whenever he wants to travel, I agree – he likes to “get away” especially when work is a pressure-cooker. The problem is that as it comes closer, he never wants to go! It’s funny. He also has had a brutal cold for a week or so, plus a hip muscle issue. Yes, we are falling apart!
Today, as I said, massage. Back in my “wealthier days” I bought a 10 massage card, and it’s time to use it! I’m not as sore as I was yesterday, thankfully.
I need to catch up on a lot of email (none of it business email – I’d be starving and homeless if I wasn’t married), and I’d like to start the “Hike” thing today if possible. We’ll see. There are a few things I actually need at the store which is up and over quite an impressive hill – that’s another thought is just to strap on the hiking shoes and hike there and hike back. Not quite as nice as the “hills” but it will do the same for my bod.
I have some more photos I need to find to put in the Dropbox for our video. Mom sent some of me as a kid reading books – which goes with my 30 second “story” – and I have in the back of my mind I actually have a photo from Surrey at my wedding of R behind the big camera, which would be a good one to include.
That’s my check-in for today! Oh – have to get “listening to” The Paris Wife (our book club book) so no more random language lessons. It was interesting listening to the Japanese one – there were some things that I did recognize, but sadly considering I passed a fluency in 1983, not THAT much. And I recognized more of the Spanish than I thought I would. I also listened to the Portuguese one – the only thing I retained was that they say “Ciao” to say “Good bye” a la Italian.
Ciao!
POSTSCRIPT: Have NOT started listening to the book yet (bad bad me), catching up on cleaning out my email, and uploading photos, etc. to Dropbox. Also “snuck in” a watch of the TAR Episode – learnings:
1. CHECK YOUR EQUIPMENT – the Afghanimals wound up with a wheelbarrow with a flat wheel. O-M-G…that is literally HELL. I do wonder if they had found it out in the BEGINNING (versus 1/2 way up the hill) if they could have gotten it mended. That’s an interesting question. I IMAGINE that either (a) there were more than enough wheelbarrows, and one had a flat tire to see if someone would pick it (nefarious!) or (b) there were just enough wheelbarrows, but IF it had been noticed at the beginning that the tire was low on air, it could have been fixed. It would have been supremely unfair if (let’s say) the LAST group to hit the Road Block got that wheelbarrow, just because it was “the one that was left” – and it had a flat tire. So I imagine that either it was there “to see if one team would be stupid enough to take it” (and there was another perfectly fine one next to it) or that they would have been able to get it fixed. I might actually go put that as a question on the TAR site – not that I think they will answer, but I’m dead curious.
2. KNOW HOW TO DO THINGS – the Ice Princesses didn’t know how to drive a stick. I think that’s sort of a “given” that you just HAVE to know how to do. I would add to that to go to a Ford dealership before the race, and try out EVERY vehicle, know how to like plug in an electric vehicle, get walked through EVERY permutation of the on-board computer, etc. As Ford is the sponsor, that’s gotta be IMPORTANT!
3. BE READY TO RUN AT LEAST A MILE WITH A BACKPACK – I know that this is not R’s “sweet spot” but when the teams were looking for taxis in a tiny Norwegian town at 3 a.m. (there was ONE), it was only 2 km to the destination. That’s about a mile. It turned out that most of the teams HAD to jog that mile – but two of the teams just got to it, one being the Chico Boys who wound up coming in first in the end. I think that’s immensely important – if you do NOT have to depend upon transportation for a short distance, not to “have” to. Huge huge huge. Also important to be able to carry BOTH backpacks for some distance – in each “track” of the event choices, one team mate had to carry both backpacks where the other teammate had to do the “task” (whether it was pushing a wheelbarrow uphill or carrying 15 pair of sun-dried codfish). And at that, time to talk about…..CROSSFIT! :-)
4. LOOK FOR THE TAR COLORS ON THE “THING” – In this episode, Pinkie and the Ex were far, far ahead but had hung their fish onto a pole without TAR colors on it – and then 3 couples passed them by before they figured out what they’d done wrong. Interestingly, no one helped them – they weren’t particularly “nasty” about it, but I think that Pinkie holding the “Express Pass” over everyone’s head has really engendered some bad blood. (The first folks who finished – and turned her down – were the Chico Boys, who were all “We don’t need your stinkin’ Express Pass” – which was funny.) But beside the BE NICE learning (laugh), this is the SECOND time that a team has gotten screwed by missing the TAR colors on something. Our favs the Bingo Boys wound up commandeering a “random shoe shine guy” (STILL laughing at that one – that poor guy!) because they didn’t see that some of the shoe shine stations had TAR-colored “ribbons” on them – similarly, Pinkie and the Ex just slung the fish up onto the first pole, not looking at the end to see that some had TAR-colored tags, some did not.
(I’m sure there were other learnings, but those were the big two!)
Here’s the WOD for today at Crossfit:
For Time
Run 1 mile
Then 4 Rounds of:
10 Dumbbell Push Press each arm 45/30lb
10 Burpee
Then 1 mile run
Oh for goodness’ sake, I think Bo just put in a couple miles of running because I didn’t show up yesterday! And yes, it’s ALL about me LOL. Not sure what a dumbbell push press is – I think that it’s when you start at your shoulder and push it up straight and back down – I know I can’t do 30 but I’ll scale. Burpees we know what they are. My shoulder still “disallows” that. When I was getting my massage, she said my shoulder was “mad messed up.” She spent 1-1/2 hours on me (like I said, I have 10 hours in “backlog”). When she was working on my legs it hurt like a S-O-B, but I feel 200% – maybe 400% – better now. Wonder if they have masseuses when you’re waiting on the next leg in TAR? (Yeah I WISH)