Holiday Road

I invite you to enjoy the Lindsay Buckingham classic “Holiday Road,” while reading today’s installment.

Yesterday was our company’s summer party. I’m on the Action Team (!), so I was sort of co-host of the whole shebang. We had an open bar and piles of yummy, fried things: shrimp with cheese and bacon wrapped in a wonton wrapper, flautas, mango quesadillas, nachos… I ate none of it. OK, I had one bite of the shrimp. I drank, like, a gallon of club soda — supplemented by a sip of my buddy Phil’s pina colada, Will’s margarita, and Kelly’s mojito.

Look! Here’s Kelly now, teasing me about eating my snack of snap peas, almonds, and grilled chicken.
I was all kinds of stressed out yesterday morning. I took an unplanned rest day because I was tired, and I was worried about facing down the plates of shimmery, shiny fried things and the vats of tortilla chips that are strategically placed around the bar. I even sent this email to my Moxy-Boss Melissa:

I’m feeling a little stressed b/c of work (super busy!), vacation (lots to do before we go), and today we have our work summer party, which I’m co-hosting. There’s an open bar and tons of not-good-for-me appetizers. I’m still debating if I want to be hardcore and just have club soda, or if I think I can have one drink and stop there. Also, do I want to have a drink today? We’re planning happy hour cocktails tomorrow with friends as a pre-vacation celebration. I’m taking my afternoon snack with me to the party, and I even packed an extra serving of almonds in case my appetite goes haywire, but I still feel anxious about the party. One cocktail can lead to three and a fried dinner if I’m not uber careful.

Her kickass reponse?

When you are stressed, the body is not operating at optimum levels. It’s unhappy. It needs some TLC. The body does NOT need additional stressors like running. Or picking up heavy weights. Or booze. Club soda today, Moxy-Boss’ orders. (For one, your body really doesn’t want it. For two, you’ll feel one hundred times mentally better about taking an unplanned rest day today if you eat clean.)

She was 100% right. I ate my clean food, drank refreshing club soda with lime, and I had a blast at the party — all without sacrificing my health. And now I can relax and look forward to a happy hour cocktail.

Plus, this morning, I was revved up and ready to go to Bootcamp, which was very good because I think Andy was trying to kill us.

See?

Bootcamp Workout ala Andy
Warmup

• 2 x 10 squats + 10 pushups + 10 rotations
• 2 x cone to cone: run + side shuffle + back pedal + run + 200m lap
• med ball circle: plank w/ hands on ball, then sideways plank walk around the circle

Workout I
We had to do cone-to-cone broad jumps to set our reps number. I, it turns out, am not particularly strong in the broad jumping arena. A big bunch of people did 16; I did 22. Sigh.

3 rounds, 12-minute cutoff:

• 200m lap
• 22 squats
• 22 dips (feet on ball)
• 16 body builders*

*body builder = 8-count pushup thingy:
1. squat w/ hands on ground
2. thrust legs out behind to form plank
3. hop feet apart
4. hop feet together
5. lower into pushup
6. push back up
7. hop feet in
8. stand up

Andy said if we were doing more than 20 reps on the squats/dips, we could cut the body builder reps half. Instead, I did 16 to see if I could catch the people in the 16-reps group. Bonita finished first, and I was chasing this kid Steve who’s, like, 20 or something. I almost caught him! He finished in 11:49 and I came in at 11:52. If I’d just NOT rested during my last set of dips, I woulda had him. Next time, Stevie!

Workout II

• 100m lap with PVC pipe in locked-out OH position
• 3 x 10 standing tuck jumps + 10 prone kipping situps
• 20 overhead med ball throws

Workout III
30-20-10 reps:

• med ball swings
• med ball slams
• 3-tap Russian twists

Bonus: Hold plank position while everyone else finishes their reps.

Now I’m completely, utterly, ridiculously, totally ready for happy hour, vacation, sleeping in, running on the beach, bear crawls in the sand, and digging into the eight books Dave convinced me to take in my suitcase.

Seriously. I was planning to take three plus Jane Eyre, and he looked panic stricken.

“You’re taking three books,” he said incredulously. “Three… THREE.”

[pause]

“No! You’re taking at least eight.”

So here’s my reading list:

• One Bullet Away, Nathaniel Fick
• She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
• Tripwire, Lee Child
• Running Blind, Lee Child
• Hellboy: The Fire Wolves, Tim Lebbon
• Best Food Writing 2006
• Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishment, Dominick Dunne
• The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova

You think that’s enough?!