Catching Up

It's been a while. Where do I begin?

From July 3rd to 14th, I was traveling in Spain. A dear friend of mine got married in Laguardia, Spain. I used the opportunity to travel to some of the cities I've always wanted to visit. I knew that, because of the wedding and having many of my friends fly into Spain, there would be days and nights that I would party and stay out, much more intensely than I have been doing over the past couple of years (which has been very minimal). I also knew that traveling by air over a long period of time (10+ hrs) would stiffen my back, hips and shoulder muscles.

I prepared myself as well as I could for this trip, by abiding to the following key principles:

1. Drink FRS every day to get my vitamins and antioxidants
2. Spend some time alone in certain cities where I can to get ample rest and sleep (i.e. don't be susceptible to friends' coaxing to go out and stay out all the time)
3. Run, even for 20 minutes, every other day
4. Don't stress about keeping a strict schedule - if tired, rest and go with the flow. Enjoy the trip, not create boot camp.

Despite 3-4 days of *obligatory* partying, I have to say I survived this rather long and busy trip pretty well. However, a week after I returned to LA, I caught a pretty heavy duty flu, and I was aching pretty much all week. I slept about 9 hours last night, got up and went to my power plate class and swam for a quick 25 minutes. This was my first work out in a full week, as I was not able to work out at all this week once the flu hit me. The flu subsided in a day, but the inflammation and congestion/fogginess stayed for the rest of the week.

I was quite frustrated having to deal with the pain again, but what scared me the most was the possibility of going through what i had been through in the Fall of last year, when I was in pain pretty much every day no matter what I did for myself. My mind had to fight the temptation to get discouraged. My mind had to erase the vision of me being in pain every day again. I went to work, got my work done, continued to take my vitamins, started eating healthy again (in Spain, your healthy food options are limited). I couldn't work out all week and I was pretty stressed so for a couple of nights i ended up woking up with heart palpitations and complete insomnia (haven't had that in YEARS). That ALMOST pushed me over the edge. I just had to keep strong and wait, fighting every minute the self-pity and sense of depression luring me back in to the dark.

Today, after a decent night of sleep and the workouts I managed to do this morning, I feel pretty good. I will rest up for the rest of the day, go to bed early and go for a bike ride tomorrow morning.

I have caught up, and am hopefully back on track.

Full training to start next week. Again.