When I was a child I remember going to Mile Square Park to
look for guppies in the lake, play a little bit of soccer with my siblings (as all
good Mexicans do), and sit around waiting for my mom to serve me a torta the
size of football. I remember water balloon fights, watching archery, going down
the one hill on my skateboard without a helmet, and carving Mick Jagger’s name
into every tree in my path (ok, this last one may warrant its own blog post.
You’ll have to wait for that one!).
I am sure if I really think about it I must have looked
around and watched people as they walked by me in their neon Dove shorts and
requisite leg warmers—you know, getting a fashionable workout on. However, I
never thought of the park as a place for me
to exercise at. Fast forward to the adult me; I still didn’t see the
purpose behind driving to a park just to walk around in a big square without
having easy access to get back into my car quickly.
I should probably explain; it’s not that I have social
anxiety and hate to be away from my car. It’s just that the farther and farther
I walk away from my car, it is that much farther that I have to walk just to
get back to it. I never saw the point…until three days ago on BEAST Mode Day
17. This was supposed to be the big day when members of team L@s Muert@s had
agreed to do an early morning (7:00 a.m.) walk at Mile Square Park.
I arrive on time. Yes, I’m being serious. Actually, no, I’m
not. I arrived early. I kept hearing in my head a line that I read on Angel
Ortiz’s Facebook page that said something like, “I grew up with the mindset
that if you are not early you are late!” I was early. I looked around and no
one was there yet. Woohoo! That meant that no one was going to show up. I could
go home and make breakfast and call it a day. As luck would have it (and I have
been finding this to be the case more often than not, lately), I stare straight
ahead and there is Joe walking towards me with a grin on his face as if he knew
I was thinking that I had gotten out of it. His friend, Tish, showed up to walk
with us also.
We stretched, chose a direction, and began his pedometer. In
the beginning it was really easy. He asked us to stay on the grass to give us a
little more resistance in our walking. Uhm, ok, did he not notice that the
grass was wet because it was 7 o’freaking clock in the morning? We walked. And
we talked. And the next thing we knew we were at the two mile mark and he asks
me what I want to do. I was feeling like a champ. I was keeping hydrated with
the water in my backpack, only by now it felt like the water I was drinking was
going directly to my socks because our shoes WERE SOAKED FROM WALKING IN THE
GRASS! I get it that my shoes are from Wal-Mart and they only cost $9, but
aren’t they meant to stay dry?
Tish began to talk about the paths that she walks on and the
inclines that they contain and it makes me feel a little better that I don’t
walk with her regularly. Three mile hikes, really? Who has time for that when I
can walk on flat land? “Not me,” said the little voice in my head. Listening to
her speak was distracting me from the distance we were going. Although I had
never met her before, she spoke to me as if we had known each other for years. I
liked her!And then we hit the three mile mark and I can almost smell the apples in my car. I know. This sounds totally stupid, but apples have suddenly become my best friends. I carry them in my backpack. I have them in my drink holder in my car. I have some in the fridge at work. I am going to name my next kid Apple. Ok, now I am taking this a bit too far. No more kids for me!!!!
Three and a half mile mark. Joe’s phone is about to die and
we can no longer listen to music as we walk. Listening to the music helped keep
me from talking, which in turn kept me from huffing and puffing. So we began to
talk again, but this time it was about breakfast burritos. WHY? Why did they
have to mention breakfast burritos when I am trying to focus on the apples in
my car? Cruel world just take me out now!
The distraction that the breakfast burrito caused me was
enough to get me around the last bend of the park without feeling like I was
going to pass out. Our pace picked up a little bit. It was the home stretch.
All I needed was a few more feet and I would reach my destination, and then all
of a sudden Joe and Tish say, “This is our car.” It was over. The four miles
were done. I was sweating like I had just ran a marathon, and my head was
spinning with emotion over having completed the four-mile journey.
It was such an incredible
feeling. I hugged Joe and Tish and walked to my car very slowly. As I opened my
car door Joe and Tish drove by me and honked, waving a final goodbye. That’s
when I got emotional. I opened my car door and sat down. I started to go for my
apple when I realized I JUST WALKED FOUR MILES! I couldn’t believe it. I get
lazy to drive four miles, let alone walk four miles. I knew that I probably
could not do it every day. But I did it that
day, and that’s all that mattered!
BEAST Mode Day 18
I was feeling a little brave from the 4-mile walk the day
before so I figured it would be no problem to walk to work. It’s just under two
miles from front door to front door. What’s two miles when I just finished
walking four, right? Wrong! So, so wrong!
There were three things that I did not take into
consideration before making the brilliant decision to walk to work:
·
I had to walk by a Jack in the Box on the
corner. God was good to me that morning because he placed blinders on my eyes
so I wouldn’t look that way. He should have plugged my nose, too, because the
scent of hash browns almost did me in!
·
I sweat like a pig. Did I really think I was going
to be able walk to work without sweating and then work a full 8-hour day in the
clothes I walked in? Ugh. That was a major fail for me that day.
·
If I wear walking shoes to walk, why did I wear
my famous indoor soccer shoes (Pumas) to walk to work? Can someone please tell
me how that little bit of logic flew out the window?
By the time I got home from work in the evening, my arches
were screaming at me. I strolled home slowly (because it was hotter than Hades
outside) but that didn’t stop the pain from creeping in on me. In typical
Lorena fashion, I ignored it and focused on the rest of the family’s needs for
the evening. I knew I wasn’t going to walk the next day.
I let the soreness linger in the
back of my mind when I went to bed that evening. “Oh, no, this is not going to
slow me down,” I thought. I know myself very well; if I lost the motivation to
get up and move, it will be lost forever. I fell asleep a little sad that
evening.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEAST Mode Day 19
There have been very few times in my life that I have opened
my mouth (or sent a text) and later regretted my actions. But I am about to
tell you about one of those times.
On Tuesday Joe sent me a text asking me how my revamped “pantry
of sin” was treating me. You see, I have a pantry at work that I keep snacks
in. Before this journey began, I had candy, chips, saltine crackers, granola
bars (the kind with chocolate chips), and a few more snacks that maybe I should
keep to myself…lol I was returning to work after a 12-day vacation, and knew
that if I wanted to remain successful on this journey, the “pantry of sin”
needed a cleanse of its own.
My office is on the second floor of a two-story building.
Right beneath my office is a dumpster that is used by the school cafeteria,
which is also beneath me and I can smell the fries cooking all day. Whoa, lost
my train of thought for a moment. Back to the pantry…so on the first day that I
returned, I ceremoniously threw away the snacks off the balcony and into the
dumpster. Goodbye Pringles. Goodbye Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Goodbye
full-fat saltine crackers. Goodbye Quaker Oats granola bars with the yummy
chocolate chips. Hello apples. Hello Pop Chips. Hello non-salted trail mix.
Then I asked the question about the pain in my arches. I
regretted the question as soon as I hit the send button. Somehow I knew that he
was going to come back with one of two answers: lay off the walking, or “here
are some alternative exercises you can do instead of walking.” (un)Lucky for me
that he came back with BOTH answers.
I knew that I was not
going to be able to stop walking because it was my only form of exercise. I
needed to keep my body in motion or else I would pay harder when I go see Sean,
the trainer over at Training Zone OC. No way, no how. Have you read about the
beatings he gives me? This was not an option for me. Joe knew that I didn’t
want to lose out on my hour of cardio, so he assigned me two exercises to do:
bicycle crunches and the “Superman” were what he prescribed as my workout of
the day. Are you kidding me? Bicycle crunches? Lift my legs in the air? Me? Has
he lost his mind? Then he wants me to do the “Superman” as if it were something
that my body naturally does?
All day at work the thought of doing these exercises plagued
my mind. How am I supposed to do these? Will he really know if I don’t do them?
After all, can’t I just say that I did them and talk about the muscle group
that I worked with these exercises? I’m sure GOOGLE is good for at least a bit
of explanation on the benefits of bicycle crunches and the “Superman.” But then
I said, again putting my foot in my mouth, “I’m going to have my kids take
pictures of me doing this so they can crack up…lol” What was his response? “Blog
it!!”
Here are the pictures of me doing the bicycle crunches. I
died halfway through the first set of 25. My legs were going to fall off, my
head was spinning because I couldn’t keep an accurate count, and the thought of
having to repeat it was nauseating. I let my legs rest for thirty seconds and
up they went again. My legs were going every which way making sure that I got
those pedals turning. What was I thinking? Walking was much, much easier than
what I was subjecting my body to.
(Wolife thought it would be fun to jump on my stomach while I was doing this.)
The next thing I knew, I had finished six sets of 25. I
couldn’t even feel my legs anymore. My hips were screaming at me to get up off
the floor. But then I turned over. I needed to get these “Superman” exercises
out of the way. Did I say that the bicycle crunches were hard? They were child’s
play compared to having to hold my legs and arms up in a Superman pose while
simultaneously planking on a yoga mat. I am pretty sure I wasn’t doing them
correctly. But to be quite honest, I had no idea what I was doing because I
COULDN’T FEEL MY ARMS AND LEGS ANYMORE!
With sweat rolling down my face and my body screaming “Mercy”
in several different languages, I realized that I should not have said anything
about my arches. I should have just sucked it up and taken a leisurely stroll
around my neighborhood. No one would have been the wiser. I could have posted a
Facebook update letting everyone know I walked around the block that day and I
would have fooled everyone into thinking that I was sweating. But no, I let my
fingers do the talking for me and ask for an alternative beatdown.
Here is the picture of me doing the “Superman” with Wolfie
helping me. This was towards the end when I couldn’t hold my arms up anymore.
He was laughing at me in the beginning, but by the time he saw I was “in it to
win it” with this exercise, he was saying, “Good job, mommy!” That’s my boy!
I learned my lesson that day. Somehow, from somewhere deep
within my body, healing promptly arrived to my arches. By the next day my
arches were completely pain free. I like to think that I willed myself to get
better, wanting never ever again to do those darn exercises.
With healed arches and a new appreciation for floor
exercises, I walked into the Training Zone OC to meet with Sean. But that was
on BEAST Mode Day 20, and that workout gets an entry all on its own.
Life is good. Enjoy the journey.
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