Hawaii in 44 Days

Steve and I leave for Hawaii in 44 days. Although we have been fortunate to travel, this is really, kind of, a trip of a lifetime. I've been wanting to take Steve there for years. I was fortunate to go in 1982 when I was 10 years old. My family spent two weeks there and our grandparents paid for half of the trip and we spent one of those weeks with them in Maui. The other islands we visited were Oahu, Kauai, and the Big Island. I have very fond memories of that trip.

 Steve and I will be spending two weeks split between the Big Island and Kauai.

I've known for awhile I've been sorely out of shape. Before Win's and my trip to the Canadian Rockies last September I spent a couple of months with a personal trainer and that really got me ready for that trip. However, I stopped working out - except for fits and spurts - after that trip. I have tried to do some walking programs, but my left foot (the one I had major surgery on) gets too sore and too swollen after a few days.

 Last night we attended the Spoofhounds home opener football game. We sat pretty far down on the stands and I took a couple of walks to the concession stand. Between those and the walk to and from the car I realized I really am not in the physical condition I want to be in for our Hawaii trip.

I told Steve this and essentially made a covenant to work out on my bike every day. I also want to do some strength training and eat and drink better. So, today was the day I started.

A little before noon I rode my trainer for 10 minutes and a little while later I did five minutes of arm weights. I've also promised both of us I will not push myself. I do not want to give up or get injured. I feel better. I think I have a pinched nerve in my lower back and my right shoulder is really jacked up, but even those seem to feel better after a short workout. I did read recently that movement is better than RICE for chronic pain and I'm trying to embrace that.

So, here I go on this journey. I'm not sure if I'll lose weight, but I do hope I can gain muscle and stamina. I am optimistic. 

A Big Day

 

May 14th is a significant day in my life.

It's Steve's and my anniversary. Today - 29 years! We got married the day before we graduated from college. Most people react with shock when they learn we put that much stress on ourselves in one weekend. However, it made logical sense to us and we are both grateful for having these events coincide with each other. I grew up in Oklahoma City. Steve's family was living in Marshfield. We didn't want to get married while we were still in college and we knew if we waited to get married during the summer following graduation, regardless of where we got married, many of our friends would not be able to be there. So, getting married at the church on campus when most of our friends were still in town and our family would all be gathered for graduation made perfect sense. It was a wonderful weekend and even with my horrible memory, I have many special memories from our wedding day and weekend.

Mother's Day also sometimes falls on May 14th - or very close to it. The year we got married, Mother's Day was the same day as graduation. Because of this, I have so many warn and fuzzy feelings as I see pictures pop up on my timeline from years past wishing my mom a happy Mother's Day and remembering the celebrations we had with Steve's mom. Everything from our wedding/graduation/Mother's Day weekend gets tied in together and there is so much happiness for these times.

My best friend's (Anne Nelson Farmer) birthday is today. She was one of my bridesmaids. We still talk every week. I love getting to celebrate her and our friendship along with the other specialness of the day. Interestingly, Anne and Chris's anniversary is on Steve's birthday.

So, I love this day and this weekend. It really has all the feels and I am always reminded of how fortunate I am to have so much love - from my mom, from Steve, from Anne, and all of our friends and family who have shared these important milestones with us year after year.

Starting Anew

 While browsing around the internet this morning I decided to revisit my neglected blog. It's got some good memories - especially of my six weeks in Indonesia. My last post was from August 2020 and I believe my intent was to blog throughout the pandemic to have a record of how that unfolded. That didn't happen. We are now (as of this week) officially out of the global pandemic - although Covid is still around and likely always will be. However, life is pretty much back to normal with a few smart changes to how society interacts with each other to try to remain a little less germ-y.

One month from tomorrow I'm having total knee replacement surgery of my right knee. I'm going to be off work for approximately 4-6 weeks and maybe even longer. With this in my future it seems like a good time to start, again, with trying to keep a fairly timely record of my doings and my thoughts about what is happening in the world.

Today I'm just saying hello. It's good to be back.

2020 - The Year that is Changing the World

Truthfully, I'd forgotten about my blog. That is until I shared it with my new team members at work who were curious about my CSC experience back in 2017. After pulling the blog up I remembered I had posted a bit after CSC. However. my last post has been over a year ago - and was almost a year to the date when the world began to dramatically change.

Early in 2020 a new virus began spreading around the globe. It's a coronavirus and was aptly named Covid-19. Governments began taking precautionary measures in January and February, but it wasn't until March that things became really serious.

In Kansas City the entire city went into quarantine on March 24th. This meant all non-essential businesses closed and remained closed until May 14th. Steve and I began quarantining on March 15th. My last outing was to have lunch with the Tribe at Spokes on March 14th. No one could have imagined that this was the beginning of much greater changes.

The entire country went into lock down for several weeks. However, we opened up too quickly and too few people are taking this seriously and we are still in the middle of an epidemic that keeps growing.

We are now five months (or more, depending upon how you are counting) into this virus and Steve and I have still barely left the house. Essentially, I do a week's worth of grocery shopping on Mondays and go pick up carry-out for dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I work from home. Church has been meeting online since mid-March. We've had a few socially distanced gatherings with 1-2 people. This means we sit about 8-feet or more apart from each other and it is BYOE (Bring Your Own Everything).

It is almost time for schools to start up (they all went online in the Spring) and no one can agree on the best way to do this. Some are going in-person, some all online and some are doing a hybrid of the two. I know many teachers and parents are terrified and confused.

Professional and collegiate sports were cancelled or have been put on abbreviated schedules. No international travel is allowed. Many governments have put in mandatory mask orders. Over 5 million people in the world have been knowingly affect and over 160,000 Americans have died. We can't shake hands. We can't hug.

We all keep eagerly awaiting for things to "get back to normal." However, I honestly don't know if what was normal will ever be normal, again. Winter will be here soon and the expectation is that things will continue to get worse.

None of this has even mentioned the incompetence of our government leadership - headed up by President Trump (who is a horrid man). The election is about 90 days away and I pray we will have a new president in January. However, half the country seems to think he's doing an okay job...and, even if he loses the election there is no guarantee he will accept the results.

All around, we are in a very ugly condition right now.

Liberty Hospital 1/2 Marathon and Jewell 5K

I forgot to post about this horrendous race.

Two weeks ago I did the Jewell 5K. I'd done this in 2017, but the course was totally changed this year. Instead of being on fairly flat ground the course took us through the campus of William Jewell College. WJC is a typical midwestern, small college - very beautiful and very hilly. It was the hardest 5K I've ever done.

The race expo was really nice with lots of vendors and free goodies. The temperature at the start of the race was 25 degrees. The hills were non-stop. Logic says that what goes up must come down, but there were certainly no drastic downhills like the inclines we endured. According to my Garmin I did the equivalent of 18 flights of stairs during the race. My time was 54:22. Not what I wanted, but in the end I was just happy to get it over with. I'm not sure if I will repeat this race next year.

Sweet 16 Begins

A new year and a new reason to be moving.

Yesterday I walked the Westport St. Patrick's Day Run. It's a four-mile race that took us from Westport north into the Valentine neighborhood, through the campus of MCC, down into Penn Valley Park and back. It was a gorgeous day. My goal was to do 18 minutes miles. My final average mile was a little over 17 minutes as I finished in 1:08:55. Mile three is what got me. I was under 17 minutes for every mile and then mile three had some hills and I stopped to drink some water ending that mile is about 18:50.

This is the first of the four races that make up the KC Sweet 16 Series. I will also be running the Trolley Run, Four on the Forth and the Zoo Run. Hopefully, by the Zoo Run in September I'll actually be running.

Also this week tri-training began for the WIN for KC sprint-tri on July 27. This mean, ideally, six days of training with Tuesdays as my rest day. Today I will swim, bike and run. It doesn't sound too appealing at the moment as I'm pretty sore from the race yesterday and then walking to and from the Brookside St. Patrick's Day Warm-Up parade and standing for about two hours to watch the parade. However, I think it will feel good and help loosen the muscles to get moving again today - especially the pool work,

Let's hope for an injury free training and race season!

A Lot to Cover

I knew it had been awhile since I'd written anything, but I didn't realize it had been since May. A lot has happened since then.

June
I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee in late June. It went well and there wasn't as much damage to the knee as I was concerned there might be. My meniscus is in great condition. As the doctor explained to my husband he did a lot of "lawn mowing" on my cartilage. I took a week off of work to rest and heal. My one week follow-up appointment essentially got me released. The doctor's assistant who saw me said I could pretty much do anything I wanted to do and just let pain be my guide. That excited me - although I couldn't imagine anyone in my condition at that time doing much of anything. However, I got in the pool pretty straight away and for two days swam 1000 yards. On day three I realized that was too much and took it down to half of that.

August
Early August I saw my orthopedic surgeon for my final release - which I was given. However, he instructed me quite differently than his assistant had. Essentially I was told that swimming was great; eventually, I could start working out on a stationary bike; and before I begin running in the spring I needed to lose weight (no surprise there, but it was the first time I've been told that by a doctor). Besides swimming, I've done water aerobics a couple of times at the encouragement of my sister. I haven't been too impressed with the water aerobics, but it sounds like my sister's instructors are much more challenging than mine.

After quite a bit of research I joined Weight Watchers. The program is really user friendly and it comes with a phone app to input your points for the day. Plus, it keeps track of my activity registered from my Garmin. I've lost about two pounds per week - which is what the experts say is healthy. I fell off the wagon for one week while I was traveling for work, but got right back on as soon as I got home.

September
I had minor back surgery to remove a large lipoma. It was an in office procedure and the whole thing took about 35 minutes. They put in some dissolvable stitches and covered those with some sort of glue. I was able to resume normal activity the next day. However, I was definitely sore and have yet to go back in the water. I expect to start up again on Monday.

Today was a great day. I walked the Run for the Giraffes at the Kansas City Zoo with my old running partner, Michelle. I honestly wasn't sure if I'd be able to make the four miles without being in great pain by the end of it. However, my knee did well and everything felt normal. It took us 1:20 to finish, but we enjoyed the leisurely race that goes through the entire zoo. Plus, I got a really fun medal with a giraffe on it.

The consequence of today was proof that my body is truly ready to start moving again. I still plan to mainly do swimming, but I also plan to add walking into the mix. And...I have three four-mile races that I need to catch up on and register my time.

At the beginning of the year I signed up for the KC Sweet 16. This consists of four four-mile races: Westport St. Patrick's Day Run, Trolley Run, Four on the 4th and the Zoo Run. The first three I was unable to do because of my knee. I was able to collect my bib and swag ahead of time, but I am expected to complete the three I couldn't run on my own and register my time. As a reward for doing all four races I got a pretty sweet full-sized microfiber towel with the KC Sweet 16 logo on it. I want to make sure I've truly earned that towel and the medals from the other races. So, now that I know I can go four miles without being in pain I should be able to knock those out in the next month or so.

I'm excited to be back at the point I am. I know I have a long ways to go. I do have goals to work toward, however: 2019 KC Sweet 16 and the 2019 triathlon season. I'd also like to do a half marathon in 2020. I've finally admitted to myself that I probably have aged out (more mentally than physically) of doing another full marathon.

Now that I'm moving you can expect more frequent posting. Happy swimming, everyone!