200 Situp, 100 Pushups, and the New Challenge

Last night we stayed up late.  Mr. Darcy helped me with the laundry while I wrapped Father's Day presents, some of the girls' birthday presents, sent out some cards that needed to be mailed this past weekend, put together the sasquetchuan list of items to pack, and then fell into bed at 11 am. So, naturally, we completely overslept.  And it was so muggy outside that despite being dressed in my running clothes, I really really did not want to run in the humid soup outside. But the bike wasn't really calling either.  I fear that I am getting lazy on my workouts.  At the moment, I have a feeling that it's because 1) I stayed up too late and 2) I know vacation is right around the corner.  I get lazy in general, but I'm fighting the good fight and plan to get on either my bike or on a run in the morning... even if I have to go to the Y and use the dreadmill to do it.

After pulling ourselves out of bed, we got the girls up and moving, breakfast in everyone's bellies, and finally after Ladybug had 2 wardrobe changes, 1 meltdown, and a partridge in a pear tree while Angelfish and I sang "Do you know the muffin girl, the muffin girl, the muffin girl do you know the muffin girl who lives on XXXYYY?"  And she realized that she was, in fact, the muffin girl and was delighted.  I also got them revved up for their birthday since I wrapped presents last night.  Ladybug asked me what they were and I told her it was a surprise and then later she reminded me not to tell them what their presents were since it was a surprise. Angelfish wants to know where I hid them because she wants to "look at them."

Finally, everyone was in the car with sufficient quantities of milk, and in Ladybug's case a cup of oatmeal since she was late coming to the party.  Angelfish had a bag of cereal despite eating 4 mini muffins.  I love that she refers to Kashi Go Lean as "my cereal."  I figure if she's eating cereal, at least it has protein and whole grains for carbs.  Then they all headed out.  Mr. Darcy will work late tonight, but I can't complain because he came home on time last night after all.  Plus, he folded and put away laundry last night. : )  Of course, I had to take out the trash because Mr. Darcy realized as he was pulling out of the driveway that it's trash day... what he failed to tell me when he asked if I would put the trash out was that the handle on the trash can is broken.  And our trash can has only one handle... or that there were 3 very smelly bags of trash that do not fit in the disgusting putrid smelling trash can.  I almost vomited from the smell.  Admittedly, I am sensitive to smell... in fact, running past Publix when they are baking something sugary can make me want to throw up too.  Or worse, one race we had to run past a fast food joint and the smell of the grease literally made me dry heave.  But I got the trash to the street just fine, despite having to tip the trash can forward while walking backward holding the lid and the side of the can.  I had visions of trash spilling everywhere, but luckily they were just visions.

So I went inside and realized.  It is Tuesday.  Tuesday is pushup and crunch day.  But this Tuesday it was on because it was final test Tuesday.  100 Pushups and 200 situps.  Oh Yeah.  After repeating to myself about 10 times that I could do this, that I've been doing my pushups and situps according to plan, I decided to go with the Pushup Test first.  I figured that if my abs were worn out, I wouldn't be able to hold myself in plank let alone actually do the pushups.  I counted in 10's, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 20 and so on. It sounds less difficult in your head.  By 70 my arms were hurting.  But I told myself that I only had 30 more and kept pushing.  For me, this is quite the feat with pushups.  And admittedly the pushups started getting ugly when I hit 80.  My back was still straight and I wasn't sagging, but I also wasn't going as far down as to almost touch the top of a slim pillow if it was underneath me.  But I made it to 100!  Granted I collapsed on the floor the second I got back up out of the 100th pushup, but I did it!! I think I may repeat the program though so I can get even stronger.  I feel like I can do even better though, plus my arms are still needing some work and I rather like the pushups versus going to the gym to do weights.  Of course, that may have to wait a few days since my arms are having major lactic acid build up at the moment.  Surprisingly my chest and back are fine.

In my euphoria with my big grin across my face, I thought of the sit up challenge.  I realized that really I had one more week to do crunches before I had to do the 200 sit up challenge, but after about a 10 minute recovery from the pushups, I decided that I was going to try the challenge today and if I didn't make it to 200, I'd so the last week of the situp challenge.  Situps/Crunches are much easier for me than pushups ever are and mentally they are not daunting to me, so I went for it.  Again, counting in 10's... I'm actually not 100% positive whether I did 200 or 210 because when I got to 180, I couldn't remember if it was really 180 or 170, so I decided it was 170 and did 30 more crunches.  I did tell myself only 30 more, only 20 more and only 10 more because it helped me keep track.  I may have been able to do more even, but with as tight as my upper abs in particular feel at the moment, I'm glad I stopped at 200. 

So what's next you ask?  Well, other than getting my butt out on my bike and running and perhaps even swimming, when I was looking at the Challenge websites, I noticed there is a 200 squat challenge.  All I could think was "next up!"  So I'll be starting the squat challenge soon.  I can't decide if I want to at least do the initial test this week and then start while on vacation or the week after or to just wait until I get back.  I have a feeling I'll end up doing the initial test this week because now I'm curious as to how many squats I can do.  Want to join me? Here's the website for this one: http://www.twohundredsquats.com/index.html

And now for your viewing pleasure... Mr. Darcy's bike!  Still nameless, but he's asked me to bring our bikes to the beach so we can try to get his parents to watch the girls for an hour or two and let us ride together.  So I'm pretty excited about that.  Whether it will happen may be another story, but we will at least bring the bikes to St. Augustine (and I already plan to bring my running shoes for either walks or jogs along the beach).  Anyway, without further ado...

I think that if this was my bike, I'd name it Nitro.  Not really sure why.  It just says Nitro to me.  But, it's up to Mr. Darcy to decide.  I'm going to let him ride for a few more weeks before I broach the subject of naming the bike.  He's still laughing over bike porn.