I left for vacation with one illness and came back with another. I got to see a lot of cool things, but the diarrhea killed it for me at the end. I feel like I'm normally an active vacationer who does at the very least lots of hiking and walking. This week that was not the case. Here's to having more control over bowel movements in the very near future!
0 Comments
Getting help from the Physical Therapist this week which I hope is going to help. She suggested cutting out milk to see if that would help my stomach/back issues because she thinks they're related. Anybody who knows me, knows I love milk. This is going to be a challenge, but at this point I'm willing to try just about anything.
It's been raining a lot here...so it hasn't been safe to bike to Puente Genil...so I haven't been able to the gym there to erg unfortunately. But luckily spinning has started up again at Gym Piña in town which is high intensity and not too rough on my back! Yay!
I also ordered a foam roller and a A-frame bike trainer off of Amazon so that I don't have to worry about getting my cardio in if it's raining out since running is just too painful for my back. The foam roller is in (as you can probably tell from the picture), and the trainer should arrive soon! I can wait on the trainer because I brought the bike to a shop to get the gears tuned up since they were skipping a bit. Now I just have to wait for the thunder and rain to hold off for a day so I can walk to Puente Genil to pick up the bike. Returning slowly and carefully. Vacation in Madrid helped to not tempt me to push too hard. The picture is from my bike ride to La Roda de Andalucia.
This week I took completely off. I needed some serious TLC for my back, and I'm hoping this week was just what I needed. It feels terrible to take time off from exercising. I know it was necessary, but it made me feel human. And I don't like feeling human. I like feeling superhuman. I did get to enjoy some things that I don't usually get to enjoy when I'm constantly getting that heart rate up, like going out to a cafe with a new friend during the week and watching excessive amounts of youtube videos.
Here's to returning to exercise safely and smartly! (Harder said than done.) This week didn't exactly go as planned. My back has been giving me a lot of pain so the plan for this next week is to take things really easy. I will be skipping out on all circuit classes, crossfit, and Muay Thai. Jill is holding me to that. My mother gave me the advice of not letting my happiness depend on working out, so that will be the goals this week: get better and stay happy. I was also super dumb and tried cleaning up my computer this week accidentally deleting Microsoft Word in the process...which is why the usual document of my workouts has been changed to a screenshot. In addition to a bad back, this week's workouts have been defined by the farmer and his goats that ambushed me and Jill on our walk to Estepa this week. Been having some back pain this week and think I minorly twisted my ankle while hiking. Will evaluated the situation as I head into next week's training and be safe and smart. I've been doing some serious rowing stalking lately. Partially because I'm obsessed with the sport and partially because it's really hard to train on your own and stay motivated to the same level that you would be with teammates and a coach present. I came across this blog post written by Felice Mueller that really hit home for me. I've shared this blog post with 2 of my teammates from last summer, but it's just too good not to share on here as well. Below is my favorite quote from the post: "It's hard to train for the Olympics. It's hard because it's physically very hard, but it's also hard to do financially, and it's hard to defend the decision to put careers and other interests on the back burner as you go for this one incredible goal." Having started rowing my super senior year at Penn State, I moved immediately to OKC to train after finishing my first and last collegiate season. If you had asked me what my post graduation plans looked like any time during my first four years of college, I would've told you traveling the world/teaching in some foreign country -- sound familiar? It's exactly what I'm doing now. But that fifth year of college changed my perspective more than a little bit. I've had a hard time doing exactly what Felice is talking about: it was hard for me to justify putting off this career/interest of foreign languages and traveling. So I didn't. But I feel like I am half-assing two goals. I'm in Spain living out this dream of mine, having an incredible experience. But I'm also trying to train like an elite athlete without teammates or a coach. I was given the opportunity to come back to this school next year or even apply to teach in a different location in Spain. 20-year-old Emma would have jumped at the opportunity to continue this career abroad. 23-year old Emma knows exactly what she wants to be doing: rowing. It's become blatantly clear to me what I want to dedicate the next 10 years of my life to. Up until this point, staying in one place or committing to just one thing for more than 2-3 years was a terrifying endeavor. I'm quite content, ecstatic actually, with the thought of training for (at least) the next decade of my life. Here's to committing to a goal - "this one incredible goal." |
Reilly
|