The Post-Apocalyptic Workout

Day 73: Challenge One = FAIL?

You be the judge.

The preceding broadcast can be viewed at blip.tv or YouTube!

Details on the next challenge Faster Slackmistress! Kill! Kill! coming...soon.

Day 70: A Sneak Preview...

(Via Engadget)

We're looking at guns, lockpicking, and a life sans sugar.  Y'know, stuff that's criminal.  Or should be.

Day 68: Putting it All Together.

Baby, wake up, I gotta go to the ER.

I grabbed my watch. 4:34am on Thursday morning.  As I pulled on my clothes, I made Will recite his symptoms.  Abdominal pain, slight fever.  He had been sick for the past ten days with a stomach bug, so none of this was too shocking, but he said it's something more serious.  He wasn't flushed or breathing heavy, so I sent him out to start the car while I took Daisy out for a quick pee and stashed her in her crate with food and water.  I didn't know how long we'd be gone. 

I offered to drive, but he insisted he was fine (minus that whole going-to-the-ER thing.)  The streets of a city that closes around 2am always look post-apocalyptic in the wee hours of the morning, and I was shocked at my ability to go from dead asleep to awake, dressed, and hyper-alert in ten minutes.

As you all know by now, Will had an appendectomy that presented some complications, so he was gutted from sternum to bellybutton.  All Post-Apocalyptic Activity was put on hold; the only zombie in my life was me, shuffling between the hospital and home. 

He was sent home Tuesday, and while he's still recuperating, I planned on resuming my workouts and beginning to assemble the next training phase.  I went for a recovery run yesterday, as I hadn't run in nearly a week and was stiff and sore from six days seated in hospital chairs and a diet that consisted of whatever was convenient.  Ten minutes, I thought, but I managed to run twenty-five. 

Pleased, I climbed the stairs into my apartment when I heard him call.

Baby?  Can you come here?

I found him in our bedroom, one hand over his seeping gut.  There was a trail of pinkish fluid that led from the closet to the bed.  He looked scared.  I bent down and looked him in the eye.

Look at me. Are you hurt?

It doesn't hurt, it's just that...all this fluid just burst out, he told me.

I realized that the trail on the floor was actually the arc of the spray that came out of his gut.  Our bedroom looked like the cafeteria from Alien, with Will playing John Hurt.

Okay, okay that's good.  Let's clean you up and call your doctor.  If he says we go to the ER, then we go back.  Okay?

Okay.

I washed and disinfected my hands, then located the First Aid Kit and re-bandaged the wound, talking calmly and firmly the entire time.  I then sat him down and called the doctor's office, who assured us that this happens, and as long as it's not gushing blood, he was okay.

It's not like I had to do this amidst nuclear fallout or zombie breaking in the windows, but as my first test of staying calm and focused in a crisis?  I think I passed.

I'm treating this as a get-back-into-the-swing of things week.  I know I owe a ton of emails and such, so please bear with me.  If I've learned anything from this, it's that you can't plan for everything.

Teller vs. Zombies.

I will be back tomorrow.  In the meantime...

Teller Survives a Zombie Epidemic in Las Vegas!

(via LaughingSquid )

An Administrative Note.

My husband is in the hospital due to an emergency appendectomy that ended up being major surgery.  As he'll be there until Tuesday, I'm spending most of my time there with quick trips home to feed and walk Daisy.  Please bear with me as PAW duties are on hold while wifely duties take over. 

I'll be back next week.

xo!

Day 60: Less Human Than Human?

Survival is Serious Business.  Which is why this site is zombieworkout.com - it's more comforting to cast the Boogeyman with a Zombie Face rather than anything that smacks of reality.  While the bulk of this experience has been done with a wink and a smile, there are more and more moments where I think, what if?  I was reading World War Z* on the plane last week, trying to choke back the lump in my throat.  Because the book isn't just about survival, it's about humanity.   Moments where what we need to do to survive and what we need to do to feel human are at odds. 

Unless you've been living under a rock, you have probably heard about the Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff.  The video on YouTube has since been taken down (and honestly, do you really want to watch it?) and the U.S.M.C. is investigating.  It is not thought to be a hoax or a camera trick; a Marine picks up a puppy, smiles for the camera (as you can see in the still shot on the linked article) and throws it over a cliff to die.

Again, I have no seen the video (nor have any desire to) but I don't believe anyone makes an attempt to stop him. 

I understand that it is easy for me to sit here, on my comfortable couch in my comfortable apartment, judging someone who is out there fighting for me.  I'd guess that most of us are brought up to believe that killing another person is wrong, until, of course, you enter the Armed Forces and suddenly it's all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. 

I'm lucky that I don't have to do that job.  And I'm thankful that there is someone who does do that job.  But I cannot comprehend the absolute, abject horror one would have to witness to get to the point where tossing a puppy off a cliff its death is funny.  Or your only way to cope.

It's a nebulous thought, but one that has to be addressed in any Post-Apocalyptic World:

What's the point of fighting for humanity if we can't retain it?

*One of the best books I've read in years, it doesn't matter if you're into zombies or not.

Day 59: Fathead!

The end of week eight proves that the zombies aren't the only thing experiencing corpse bloat.

Previously:

This Week:

My weight is up but my measurements are (mostly) down.  I blame this on my parents, as they forced me to join them in Florida and feast on the innards of the bugs of the sea and consume many alcoholic libations.  Also, the whole point of having parents is that you have someone to blame things on.  This is why orphans are sad.

My husband said to me why don't you lie about your weight?  They're not gonna know.  But I feel like lying about that starts a slippery slope that ends in book deals and Oprah. 

Okay, I know, like that's gonna happen again.  Waitaminute...

Anyway, the only place I lie about my weight is at the DMV.

Moving on.

This the Final Week of the Couch-to-5K.  Spinning has mostly fallen to the wayside as has weight training as I gear my body to put one foot in front of the other for thirty minutes straight.  Sunday was my first outing, and at 8:00am I strapped on my running shoes and kissed Mr. Boy and Daisy the WonderDog goodbye and told them to shoot my ashes from a cannon if I didn't make it home alive. 

With the help of Google Maps, I had plotted a course to run outside.  We've had fabulous weather here in Los Angeles, and it only seems fitting that I start taking it to the streets, just like Michael McDonald.

FORTY minutes, people.  Forty mothereffing minutes.  In a mothereffing row.

A hair under three miles. 

Today I   left at 3pm to try it again.   However, I didn't follow my own advice on dumbassery  - that 2.5 pounds I gained over the past two weeks all must have gone to my head - as I hadn't eaten a damned thing (minus coffee) all day.  I bonked after 1.7 miles and walked the rest of the way but can I just have a moment to say I - the fat, slow kid who huffed and puffed through Hernia Hill - ran 1.7 miles in a fasted state.

Will try again tomorrow, sans dumbassery. 

And next Monday I start the next training phase of the PAW.  Stay tuned....

 

Day 54: And a Dog Shall Lead Them. Maaaaaybe.

As I wrote yesterday, I'm nursing a wee bit of a wonky hip so I had to adjust my workout schedule accordingly.  Being that I'm practically at the end of week eight, that's somewhat of a bummer.  But it's a reminder that we just can't plan for everything (and the first eight-week challenge is really nine weeks, so I have some wiggle room.)

Speaking of wiggling, as I laced up my shoes to head to the gym I thought y'know, it's a beautiful day outside...  Thirty second later I was half-dressed (when I get an idea, I drop everything including trou)  at the computer, checking to see what my route should be.  My last 25-minute run covered 2.3 miles (I.R.Slow) and moments later I had a route - shorter, around two miles, as I wanted to baby my hip (not a baby on my hip - I can train for that later) and grabbed my keys when I saw...

The Sad Eyes.

The logical jump to make is to take Daisy with me.  Except that walks with Daisy are an exercise in Doggie ADD where she stops every three seconds to send pee-mail (lifting her leg to do so - my bitch is butch!) and occasionally acting like a terror when she sees a dog off leash.  Daisy, you see, is a pit bull, and while Daisy is a doll with children (hanging with my niece since she was a month old) to the old folks, Daisy is NOT a fan of other dogs.  Will and I have worked with some basic behavior modification (all positive training, a beautiful thing) so she doesn't go apeshit when she sees another dog, but there's something about dogs off leash that drives her crazy. (She takes after me this way.)  It starts with a small but discernible whine and ends up with an OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG barkmonster.    

Again, we train through all of these things.  And she's not a danger, as she is only 47 pounds and I can easily pick her up as I've had to when my neighbor's westie runs across the busy street and then attacks her. (The neighbor finds this 'funny' even when I explain that her dog is going to be pancaked by a passing car.) 

I thought to myself:

can I really run two miles outside, with people, traffic, kids playing, cracks in the sidewalk, people selling fruit on the corner, and cat calls, all while towing along my 47-pound dog who hates other dogs and likes to stop every thirteen steps to lift her leg on a tree or poop under the world's thorniest bush that I end up looking like a cutter after I extract her stinky offense in an attempt to be a good citizen?

Shockingly, the answer to that question turned out to be yes.

I started out too quickly but we eventually hit our rhythm, and I only almost got clotheslined twice.  Not too shabby for our first outing.  My hip held up until the last few blocks, but that ended up not being a issue because I outlasted my dog.

Daisy the Wonderdog, exhausted! Minutes ago.

I think I'll be working her into the next training challenge... 

Day 53: Half-Assed.

I have returned from the other side of the country tanner, fatter, and a wee bit achier as I spent ~6 hours crammed into a seat made for an anorexic midget, not to mention the spill I took when I was sprinting across the Houston Airport to make my connecting flight to Los Angeles. 

The second my Fluevog hit the overly-waxed patch of tile that I knew I'd be flying ass-over-teakettle momentarily. If I was in a movie they'd slam to a slow-motion-montage: a baby crying, a burst of light; kids on swingsets; a faucet, dripping; a flower opens, then closes, and then back to real time where my last thought was savetheMacBooksavehteMacBooksavetheMacBook. My body instinctively cocooned my precious computer cargo as my ass slammed to the floor.

Ow.

When I got back from the airport, I should have gently stretched it out, then taken a wee bit of a walk to get everything moving and limber. 

Instead, I installed myself on the couch, curled up next to the HusbandThing, and caught up on my TiVo.

Which brings me to this morning.  The hip's a little tighter, although the ass isn't so sore.  I'm scheduled to head out to the gym and do a 28-minute run. 

What I should do is warm up a little longer, maybe schedule a shorter jog today and a longer jog tomorrow.  I should take a day to stretch and work out the tightness, as it's just muscular and was compounded by a) sitting in an airplane seat and b) totally biting it on the airport floor. 

So what do I do?

I head out to the gym, walk the instructed 'brisk, 5-minute warmup' and then start to jog.

At the five minute mark, the muscles around my right hip and asscheek decide that if I won't listen to reason that they're going on an all-out protest, and not one of those non-violent protests where people light candles and hum and play hackysack and welcome you int the friendship circle, no, this is one of those protest where they get out the billy clubs and  tear gas and the attack dogs.

It looked a little something like this:

Okay, I didn't actually fall off the treadmill, but, y'know, I could've.  I walked for a bit, then gently stretched the cramp.  It still needs some work - thankfully I've got the Foam Roller of Doom (tm).  So while all y'all are showing off your "mobility" with your whole "walking on two legs," I will be rolling my right hip and corresppnding asscheek over a firm, coffee-can shaped piece of foam and swearing at the top of my lungs.

Kinky...just not the good kind.

Day 51: A Child Will Lead Them?

The above vlog can be viewed at blip.tv or YouTube!