Thanksgiving Weekend

So Thanksgiving 2011 has come and gone. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and relaxing holiday weekend! We generally keep our Thanksgiving small - my mom always cooks the Thanksgiving meal and my dad and brother are of course always home with us. My mom's youngest sister, my aunt Sandy, always comes over along with my dad's mom.

*I always need a photo with my favorite!*

I totally maxed out on Thanksgiving food, as I know most of us did. I don't want to do that next year! I felt sick the entire rest of the day. Starving yourself until the big meal is not a good idea. I can't really say I ate well the rest of the weekend either. Friday night Phil and I were suddenly starving around 11 PM and maxed out on some Spaghettio's and meatballs. Whoops! I really cannot wait until I move into my own apartment - I know it probably sounds like I'm making excuses, but it is really hard to eat well when living at home and then spending a lot of time at my boyfriend's place. There is too much bad food temptations at my house, and then Phil is never stocked up on groceries. This usually leads us to bad food decisions on the weekends. I feel like once I'm in my apartment, I can have structure and good, healthy food on hand. I can't wait to go to boot camp on Monday morning and get back on track for the week.

I did go to boot camp on Thanksgiving morning. The workouts have been really tough there lately! They got some new equipment in and there's always a new exercise to learn. Heaven & Hell now has a Facebook page, so if you're curious about the setup, here is the studio:

Anyone in the Lisle/Woodridge/DG area - if you'd like to come try out a session, let me know! Everyone is allowed one complimentary visit to see if they like it. I did boot camp 4 days in a row last week. By Friday, I absolutely could not WAIT to give my muscles a rest! Then I hit up my regular gym with Phil on Saturday morning and got a good 40-minute cardio session in.

This is going to be my last full week at my current job. I've worked there for 2 and a half years, and it feels quite strange to know that this week will be my last. I don't want to get into a lot of the details, but I was presented with another opportunity and decided it's time for a change. I better make sure that I'm prepared for it, because my schedule will be changing too. I currently work 9 to 5; at the new job I'll be working 8:15 to 5:15. This means that if I want to keep up with morning boot camp, I will have to switch from the 6:15 AM class to the 5:30 AM class in order to make it to work on time. I will also be getting home later, so I have to acknowledge that that could affect my drive to exercise in the evenings. I guess there will be some trial and error until I get into a schedule that works for me.

Have a great week, everyone!

Sky Rise Chicago

Thanks to my flood of Facebook posts and pics, most of you know what happened today: The Willis (or Sears) Tower Climb! Whatever you want to call the building, the climb today meant one thing - walking up 103 floors!

Phil and I woke at about 7 AM and made a protein and carbohydrate balanced breakfast: scrambled eggs with cheese and whole wheat bread with grape jelly. I may or may not have snuck in a small bowl of Apple Jacks as well! My scheduled start time was 10 AM and Phil’s was 11 AM, so I didn’t feel bad about eating a large amount of food – I figured it would be mostly digested by the time of the climb.

We left around 8 AM and made it inside the tower around 8:40. The buzz inside made me even more excited for the climb. Participants who had already completed the climb were walking around with their medals. None of them looked too worn down, so that encouraged me. We picked up some coffee at Corner Bakery to give us a bit of a boost, then checked my bag with my sweats and jacket at the gear check. We asked the information table if Phil could start with my 10 AM group instead of waiting until 11, and they said that wasn’t a problem. It was nice that we could start the same time – but I told him I wasn’t going to wait for him during the climb, and I didn’t!

We got in line around 9:30, and realized we didn’t have to officially “wait” until 10 – they kept advancing the line, allowing climbers to enter 6 seconds apart from one another. By 9:40 it was my turn to get started!

This being my first stair climb, I had no intention of running the stairs – I was not even sure how to train for the event or if I had trained properly. I wanted to climb them at a steady, pretty quick pace similar to what I do on the stair climber machine at the gym. After my first few steps, I realized each step was probably double the height of what the stair machine’s are! In all honesty, by Floor 5 I was thinking, “I’m never going to make it!” Still I stayed focused and before I knew it, I had come to the first water station on Floor 24. Even though it was early into the climb, I was sweating up a storm and felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest.

The stairs weren’t very crowded, for about half of the stairwells I was by myself. Sometimes you would come across 3 – 4 people, but usually I would find just one other climber. There were roughly 10 steps (when taking the stairs one at a time) in each flight.

There were some really cool signs posted along the way – some with information about the RIC, others telling you how far you’ve climbed compared to other famous monuments. There were signs that said “You’ve now climbed higher than the St. Louis Arch”...the Eiffel Tower...the Empire State Building...etc.

Floors 50 – 70 seemed to take for.ev.er. I remember the 60’s being particularly challenging, as I was feeling a bit dizzy and lightheaded. Once I hit 75, I knew the end was near! I powered through to Floor 80, 85, 90. By 90 I was feeling pretty pumped and wanted to try to run up the rest of the flights, but here things got a little annoying. The stairwells from floors 85 and up were much more narrow than the others, and many other climbers were starting to get very worn down. You were supposed to climb on the right to allow other climbers to pass you on the left. Well, everyone was taking up the whole stairwell! I was trying to pass people and couldn’t push through. I ran up flights 100 – 103, and as I approached 103 could hear people cheering. I hustled up the stairs and got my medal!





Photo credit goes to my cousin Rachael, who also made it to the top! Congrats! Since you so nicely photographed the medal, no need for me to go through the trouble of taking one and uploading it :) haha.

Surprisingly, my legs do not feel all that sore (we'll see what I say tomorrow!). I really feel like all the squats 4 times a week in boot camp helped strengthen them, plus my 45 minutes I spent on the stair climber a couple time a week. The cardio aspect of it hit me a lot harder. As of right now, I still plan on going to boot camp tomorrow morning. Official race results are supposed to be posted on the site this evening, so far I can't seem to find them but will keep checking!

We stayed on the Sky Deck for a little bit, taking in the awesome view of Chicago.




Thank you again to all of you who supported my fundraising for this event. The climb benefits the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. RIC provides world-class rehabilitation care to patients - children and adults - from around the globe for traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, as well as stroke and cancer.

In this month of thanksgiving, I am thankful that my body allows me to do what I did today. Walking is something we take for granted while some patients of RIC must work hard to learn to walk again or be able to do other physical movements we do without thinking. Today I thought about how so many of us criticize our bodies on a daily basis when we should be thanking it for all it does on its own and all we can push it to do. The stair climb is the last event I had planned for 2011 - I participated in the Warrior Dash, the Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon, and now this. Thank you, body, for allowing me to do what I have done this year!

***UPDATE*** Race times posted!!! My official finish time was 26 minutes, 51 seconds

The Best $20 I Ever Spent

A month ago, I purchased an Amazon Local deal for Heaven and Hell Boot Camp in Lisle - $20 for one month of unlimited classes.

This was the best $20 I ever spent! I am fully addicted to these classes. When I signed up for them, I had a few goals in mind that I hoped the class would help me reach:

1. Become a morning exerciser. I still hate hearing that alarm go off in the morning. I never jump out of bed enthusiastically. But once I'm in the car and on my way to the class, I can't wait. Not once have I regretted the decision of sacrificing an hour of sleep for these classes. Regret for skipping them? Yes, I did feel that when I skipped a class! I haven't missed any since. I thought working out in the morning would make me tired throughout the day, but most days I feel the exact opposite. I have much more energy and focus when I go to class in the morning. Bonus: working out in the morning burns more calories throughout the day than evening workouts!

2. Get past the exercise plateau. I've been doing the same exercise circuit for awhile - stair climber, crossramp, treadmill, outdoor running, etc. I always mix up the intensity, but it gets a bit stale at times. Every boot camp class is comprised of 6 to 8 stations that do a variety of strength training or anaerobic exercise - jumping, kettle bells, squats, push ups, pull ups, so on and so forth. I'm never bored and always challenged. I lost 2 and a half pounds with the classes, and that is with zero changes to my diet and weekly indulgences. 2 and a half may not seem like a lot, but that depends on how much you need (or want) to lose. I've wanted to drop "those last 5 pounds" for a year now. When you reach a certain weight, it gets much more difficult to do that.

3. Do more resistance and strength training. Obviously, this was an easy goal to reach since that's what the class is focused on. When it comes to my regular gym workouts, I am a cardio addict and have a very hard time making myself lift weights or do abs exercises. When I do do them, I often do a set or two and then stop. I've noticed a huge change in my strength and overall fitness by doing more strength training with these classes.

The instructor gave us Amazon Local users a discount membership rate if we joined once our vouchers expired. This rate was still pricey to me at $59.99 for unlimited classes. I contemplated quitting LA Fitness and joining Heaven and Hell only, but I didn't want to give up my cardio equipment access or have to pay initiation fees again if I decided to rejoin LA Fitness at some point. I talked to the instructor this week, and he lowered it again to $39.99. So...I decided to sign up for another month of classes! I know I'm supposed to be saving up for my apartment and all that jazz, but it's really not that much and can definitely be taken from other areas of my budget.

On Thursday, we were introduced to yet another interesting piece of equipment: the power wheel.



As the instructor strapped this on his feet and prepared to demonstrate, I was thinking we were going to have to maneuver it like a unicycle - no thank you!



Turns out that's definitely not what you're supposed to do! More like this:

You started in plank position and then had to pull yourself 1/3 way across the room. Then you stopped and did 5 knee strikes - pulling your knees to your chest. Then you pulled yourself across the room again and did 4 pikes:



Then pulled yourself a little further and held plank position for 30 seconds. WHEW!!! My abs were on FIRE!

The Willis Tower climb is THIS SUNDAY...I can't believe it's here already! The year is flying by.