I Do Not *Heart* Rest Days

I didn’t want to, but I felt like I should take today off from working out. I was starting to feel quite raggedy. Sore, creaky, broken down. And I have many bruises that I keep forgetting about until I painfully bash then into something:

• a 4-inch long gray-blue smudge on my right thigh from my first pathetic attempt at a lazy vault on Sunday. I ran at the wall… and crashed right into into. It was more of a clonk than a splat.
• a 2-inch circle of green and purple on each shoulder from bonking myself with dumbbells during cleans
• a 3-inch Rorschach shape (cadet blue) just below my right collarbone from I don’t even know what… maybe the cleans
• a sore spot on my left toe from running around during the day and wearing fancy shoes to my show Saturday night
• and, of course, the obligatory calluses that prove I do CrossFit

My plans to sleep in this morning were thwarted by my brain’s desire to be up and thinking about stuff. I woke up at 4:27 and, unable to fall back to sleep, picked up a guilty pleasure book: Twilight. I liked it. But I do have terrible taste in entertainment sometimes. The book is the equivalent of junk food, but I figure since I’m not going to eat Fritos, it’s OK to read junky books.

I was feeling pretty tired yesterday, too, after the weekend’s adventures. But Monday Bootcamp is essential to starting my week off right. I got to Eilers Park early to take a run at burpees and realized there’s a great little vaulting fence rightthere.

I got 50 burpees out of the way. And then I used the fence to practice a drill that will, I hope, improve the odds that I will do a monkey vault before my next birthday. I also did my version of 10 lazy vaults (no soaring, more like climbing, but I did get over the damn thing). It was fun, running around in the dark, sorta vaulting.

Then Bootcamp.

4 rounds, 30 seconds each station:

• overhead press, 2 13-lb. kettlebells
• dips
• med ball toe taps
• overhead squats, PVC pipe
• renegade rows, 15-lb. dumbbells

* sprint a lap ’round the parking lot (250m?) between rounds

Med Ball w/ a Partner (Yay, Carla!)

• 15 overhead throws
• 15 3-tap Russian twists
• 15 cradles w/ overhead throw
• plank, 45 seconds
• L + R plank, 30 seconds each
• 15 cradles w/ overhead throw

Today was a gross day at the office — the kind of day that makes me question what I’m doing with myself — and my work continued until 10:30 tonight. Way too much copywriting for one day.

My parents arrive tomorrow for a long weekend, and I’m very excited to see them.

Dad’s only here tomorrow and Thursday because he’s working, but Mom’s going with Dave and me to the 10k in San Antonio on Saturday. She and I are also going to squeeze in some girly stuff like shoe shopping and packing up copies of my book to send to the cast of Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s Roller Derby movie.

My mom is an excellent hugger, and she smells really good — like comfort and love. She’s a great, funny friend, too — a good partner for silliness. And my Dad is pretty much the prototype for the world’s best dad: he tells corny jokes and has always told me I’m beautiful and could be the first female president.

Both of them taught me that it’s important to tell other people how you feel about them. So if I get all gooby and earnest and dorky telling you how much I like you, you can blame them.

This is the first time my mom’s seen me since I started the Zone and CrossFit… she’s gonna be seeing a whole lot less of me. Wheeeee!