"Try-Athletes": You Spin Me Right 'Round Baby, Right 'Round

Jenny and I are getting smaller and healthier. Weeooo! No big deal.

We measure our waists with our hands and we just eyeball the rest of it. I have yet to weigh myself or take actual measurements. Jenny checks out the pipes everyday.

I think my knees are getting stronger. I am my grandmother, obviously.

I realized that our blog and Try-Club, the spinoff of Brent's Tri-Club, is starting to sound like one of the Reality TV shows but that was never our intention. We are just fat girls trying to get off the donuts and cheeseburgers.

This whole note/blog thing was meant as a joke to keep track of how we were doing for ourselves, and to keep it all lighthearted. We have fun times, and we are funny people. We want to look back at this and laugh, reminisce at some point about not only how tough it was but also about how much fun we are having while doing it. Because it is actually fun. It is hard work - this stuff isn't easy, especially when we get frustrated with ourselves because we don't get something right away.

Don't for a minute think that we understand everything or excel at everything right away. When we say here that something hurts or is tough, we're not just dancing around with rainbows and butterflies and saying, "Oh yeah, that was a little bit of an owie." We are saying, "Yo mofo, that was PAIN. FUL." Because we are not in shape, and we like to eat and we enjoy what we eat and we are paying for being lazy while we eat. When we say that this is rough going, we mean it, even if we laugh when we say it.

But, we are still trying to have fun while doing it. We may never be Triathlon-ready but we are Trying... in a few months, we may have more confidence to push through to the next level of training. We're not giving up.

Today was one of those days where I got ready and went to Spin Class but wasn't really raring to go. I forgot to put in my eyeballs (aka contacts). I'm never really raring to go anywhere, to tell the truth, but tonite I noticed when we all started walking towards the gym that if one of the crew said, 'I'm not feeling it tonite...', it would have taken every last ounce of willpower in me to encourage everyone to go and I would not have been able to encourage all 3 of them to go inside the building. If it was just me, I probably wouldn't have gone, despite all of the recent success.

And while I was feeling that lack of enthusiasm, I don't think I fully realized it until about 7:25 or so, after I had been on the bike for about half an hour. We didn't do stairs tonite - Jenny's breathing was hitchy and she had a cough and my legs were like a drunken sailor's. I won't be on stairs for awhile yet. I got a clean bill of health today, except for low iron, so I should be good as soon as the iron business gets settled away.

The Spin-a-roni bikes don't hurt as much anymore, in fact they hardly bother us at all. I guess we have built up callouses. I don't want to lay behind the speaker with a bag of ice on my genital area, so that's a good sign.

The 'acid trips' still remain - tonite was one of those times. Holly's voice barely broke through the reverie - we need her to get wild again. At times I felt like I was going to fall straight off the bike and onto the floor. It's like I was living in a different world - every now and then, Jenny would say something and I was like, "Oh, there are other humans here!" but other than that, all was still in Spin Class World.

I was concentrating pretty hard on getting the rpms up but I felt like I wasn't getting any heat out of my body. The music was fantastic but my energy was lagging. I am a lazy arse, obviously. I felt pretty good about being able to get the rpms up, and I worked extra hard tonite when I realized that it was so tough to be there. I figured I was there so I may as well make the time worth it, so I worked my butt off. But my brain tried to sail away.

People were running around with little UFO shaped things over their heads and I'm not sure if I dreamed that or if it was real. Sometimes they were in front of their bodies, and sometimes over their heads, like umbrellas. And sometimes kids were running around with orange pipes/bars that looked like weapons. Why would kids have weapons on the running track? Pretty sure it's not that dangerous up there.

Holly had us do a 'hover' on the bikes which is very hard when you are not used to doing it... it's basically where you pretend you are a an upside-down helicopter - your legs move and your body doesn't. Diff-i-cult. I could never stand on the bike for a long period of time but I have found that if I put the gears up to 15 or so, and pedal relatively slowly, I can stand up for awhile. This may not be doing me very good but it allows me some workout time while standing. Gear 11 does nothing - it just tires out my legs and I have to sit down. Useless. But Gear 15 makes it better which equal success. It depends on how you measure success. Jenny stands up on the bikes all the time - she does great. Jenny will be running the Triathlon by March ;)

UMMM P.S. I know someone who swam in Gregoire Lake and she said she had to swim in seaweed... hmmm.... not too sure 'bout it. I don't want to swim in seaweed, as this will tangle around my neck and other body parts (aka legs and arms and torso) and I will become upset.

Jenny called me the exorcist again. I'm becoming afraid of myself. She's Satan and I'm the exorcist. I could cry.

We were doing stretches and there is this one where you lay on your back and throw your legs in the air repeatedly as slowly as you can, so I was doing that and concentrating on not dying. What I didn't know was that Jenny was watching me intently (because she is obviously a stalker). She then accused, "You're not breathing!"

You might be surprised at how many people are running around, accusing me of not breathing lately.

The worst part is that it's usually true. I'm like a hippopotamus - I unknowingly hold my breath for ages.

But not tonight during stretches... I was breathing. So I turned my head to the right, towards Jenny, and said, "Yes, I am!" but what Jenny saw was my head whipping to the right and my breathless "JENNY!" face while I disagreed with her. And so she told me I looked like the exorcist. I told her if there is ever another movie, I'm auditioning. I can do all my own stunts..."You spin [my head] right 'round, right 'round, like a record baby, right 'round, 'round, 'round" (Dead or Alive).

We were really focused tonite. I forgot to bring food, so Mat had to bring me a snack. Lisa said she is worried about the swimming thing for tomorrow if we are advancing too quickly ahead and I reassured her that there is no worries because my breathing out the left side makes my left arm look like a chicken wing, which in turn causes me to sink a little bit and therefore drown.

I started tracking what I eat on myfitnesspal.com. Sweet Jeezly, they are on it. They give you all kinds of calories for this and stuff for that. It's pretty decent. I'm on this.

Sweet Lord in Heaven, my dog is currently cracked out on dark chocolate. I can't settle him down since he stole a piece of my Lindt Intense Mint bar. I ration out chocolate as if it is war time. Treats are scarce around these parts now that I am on the 4 Week Food Challenge, and he is not allowed to have chocolate anyway. So now I have to deal with this little 8lb monster of lightening as he is running nonstop all over the house with his tongue hanging out. Harley thinks he is the boss of everything but he is only allowed to be the boss of his Cookie Monster. It's going to be a long night.

Happy Valentine's Day, all <3!