Last week I put my MIT biology degree to use and went into the desert to study mice. Sadly, these little dopey-eared, big-eyed, pocket-sized mice act as a reservoir for the Hanta Virus. I’d take them home to cuddle, but there was a very real risk of death by Hanta. Damn.

Anyways…

It was the desert and GORGEOUS! All juniper trees & sage bushes. Apparently mice are nocturnal (news to me), so we’d wake up before dawn to collect traps and go out before sunset to set them. It was all very outdoorsy & complete with loads of fresh sage-scented air. Remember the movie Wanted & how they lure rats to eat explosive-infused peanut butter? Same thing, minus the explosive. Here’s a photo of me on a nightly jaunt into the desert, bait in hand & trap ready to be set:

We had a bit of down time during the day, and I had these delusions of running. I’ve been exercising in Boston, and I definitely need to continue training. A nice run through the countryside sounded perfect. Small detail: that countryside was at 5000 ft elevation, and I’m used to Boston’s rich oxygen-filled air. Let’s just say my first run last week was really pathetic. I was a shuffling, huffing mess, struggling up the moderate incline of the road. Cars were giving me a nice wide berth in case I keeled over and would fall into oncoming traffic. Plus, my friend warned me about the resident rattle snake population, so every stick & groove in the road gave my heart yet another unwanted jump.

For some ungodly reason, I tried again a couple days later. We were walking around to the various sites for trapping the mice, and I felt myself getting acclimated and my legs getting stronger from walking through the loose dirt. “Running Take 2″ was a smashing success, and I stayed out a full 45 minutes. So long, in fact, that Gita apparently asked if they should send out a search party. I think she saw my first day’s running and imagined me a collapsed lump on the side of the road with rattle snakes curled up with my remains. But no! I was running along, just a bit faster and with a little less gasping. Not by much, but by enough that I came back grinning that I had improved in the time that we were there.

Stuffy nose, sore throat, pressured ears.  Yay!! (read: complete sarcasm)

This morning I was in a pickle – do I go to the gym in my exhausted state or do I remain a lifeless lump curled up in bed?

The decision wasn’t even as straightforward as gym or no gym. For a bit of context: I work in NYC during the week, but my gym (and trainer Tara) are in Boston, where I technically live. So this morning as I was contemplating whether to get out of my warm, soft, amazingly comfortable bed, that bed happened to be in a NYC hotel room.

Unable to decide & not thinking clearly, I did what any other sleepy person would do: I pressed snooze on my alarm. 5 times.

By the 6th time, I realized that I had decided by default, and I was staying in that bed for better or worse. I called up Tara who immediately commented on my smoking man’s crackly, croaking voice and said to take it easy and we can pick up tomorrow instead.

With that blessing, I went back to sleep for a wonderful 4.5 more hours and woke up confident that I was better off for it!

Three months into training!

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been 14 weeks! In those 14 weeks, I’ve managed to lose ~17 pounds (which I liberally round up to 20, depending on the company) and a staggering two pant sizes!

Woohoo!

I assure you though, it hasn’t been all early morning work outs and protein shakes. I don’t do mornings. Ask my trainer Tara. As for protein shakes, I do have a new and surprising love of flax seed. Go figure.

There have been all the expected ups & downs with the training, including a person favorite email to Tara:

So if there’s a wagon, I’m the lump on the side of the road that fell off… and that sounded a hell of a lot funnier in my head… After spending all Thursday in bed with a side of ginger ale, I proceeded to skip the gym for the rest of the week & weekend (even though I was feeling just fine by Thursday night). Not good. Not good at all.

And now, 14 weeks in & 20 weeks from the walk, today surprised me.

“Time for your favorite,” Tara practically sang in a playfully menacing and completely forboding way. “Grab a ball.”

Ever since my last blog, Tara has joked about my “favorite” (i.e., the bane of my existence) exercise and added “fun” (i.e., completely impossible) variations to it. Always hard and never pretty, the Triple Threat superset reduces me to a puffing, sweaty mess.

Today was no different. Except, somehow my burning muscles safely protected under layers of fat managed to lift my butt off the ground higher than ever before!!!

What?? My muscles are getting stronger?? What?? Triple Threat is getting easier?? What?? This training thing is actually working??

I was excited. All the way through the last sets where I returned to my puffing, sweaty mess barely inching my butt off the ground, I remembered those precious early sets where I saw the difference.

Fourteen weeks later and the hard work is paying off!

Also nice to have: the ability to turn off your brain for the period of the exercise

I’ll explain.

My trainer Tara was careful not to introduce the Triple Threat. She just had me lie on my back and rest my calves on the stability ball. Fairly comfortable in fact – how little did I know at the time what was coming…

With my calves still on the ball, Tara had me raise and lower my hips for 10 repetitions. Straightforward enough. My hips weren’t technically supposed to touch the floor between raises, but I’m pretty sure even at that point, I slipped a couple of times.

From there (with hips still not touching the floor) I was supposed to use my legs to roll the ball back and forth towards me. Hearing this, I laughed a bit to myself (in my head, because actually laughing would have taken critical ab muscles). I’m supposed to do what?

Miraculously, I somehow made it through the rolling exercise, my abs on fire and my brain insisting that enough is enough. (Thankfully?) I have Tara to ignore my brain and tell me the third and final act of Triple Threat.

Without dropping my hips, I was to roll the ball so my feet were flat and from there, pump my hips up and down. By this point my legs joined the screaming of my abs, and it took everything to not collapse onto to the mat.

I have no idea how, but I managed to make it through. At least, I think I made it through. Truth-be-told, I only have hazy memories of the later parts of Triple Threat – too much blood was needed to bolster my exhausted muscles.

So in summary, to do Triple Threat:

1. Turn off brain

2. With your calves on a stability ball, pump hips up & down

3. Roll ball back & forth

4. With your feet flat on the ball, pump hips again

5. Collapse

Wanting to do this right, I’ve enlisted the help of a personal trainer at Healthworks (my gym in Boston). Tara is brilliant. Painful, but brilliant. 

So far she’s succeeded in two things I never thought possible:

1. Getting me up at 6 am to go to the gym

2. Getting me to do 2 minutes of jumping jacks

This post is all about the jumping jacks.  When I heard 2 minutes, I naively didn’t think twice. Two minutes sounds simple enough.  How cute.

I remember jumping jacks from my days on the black top in school. They were wedged between cherry pickers and shoulder circles in our PE warm-ups. Thinking back now, I vaguely remember counting to 25 or some such (small) number, not 2 minutes!

For better or worse, I didn’t check the clock, so when my trainer Tara announced, “One minute left!” I was amazed. In my enthusiasm, I started a fast little pace, and by then my calves were shrieking out in pain. How could there possibly be a whole minute to go?! More importantly, how could I possibly get through that minute!?! 

I’ll spare you the details of the second minute and me ingloriously hopping up and down like a flailing, sunburned lobster, but I made it! That’s what this walk is all about: pushing oneself to get healthier. It’s not going to be easy (and it may not always be pretty), but in the end, we will be better off than before and hopefully have inspired others in the process.

Goal next week: two and half minutes?