Day 9: Everything is Awesome

Everything is cool when you're part of a team
Everything is awesome
When we're living our dream

Today is one of those days I am totally humming “Everything is Awesome”…. Because everything is AWESOME. Crossfit sucks, but Crossfit is even awesome when your class consists of 1 instructor and 1 of your friends. Now I do have to say, this particular Crossfit is like Crossfit for beginners. It is called Crossfit Element’s. This teaches you how to do the move correctly in order to get you ready for “mother crossfit”. This is everything we did today:

It was a 9am class and my first time ever doing Crossfit. The very first sentence out of my mouth to the instructor, Marci was: “Hi, I’m Nicole, and I am terrified of Crossfit”. She smiled and assured me it was not scary. I still had my doubts... but now that I have Q as my trainer, I can assure you Crossfit is not so scary.  However, I repeat, It does suck. Thankfully it was just me, Lena and Marci who as people do not suck.

I love working out with Lena because she makes me laugh. I really love people who make me laugh, it is my most favorite thing to do. So when Marci says “make sure your chest hits the floor before your stomach” during the WOD pushups, and Lena shoots a look to Marci with her big doe eyes and says “But I can’t, my stomach is bigger than my chest!” (Which it is really, really not) I started laughing because she didn’t miss a beat. In addition to Lena’s quick sense of humor, she has been doing Crossfit for a little bit now and it made me push myself further than I probably would have otherwise. I tried my best to keep up with her, but that last set of wall balls did me in.  I really want to be friends with that damn medicine ball, but he sure is making it hard! Enjoy this picture of our relationship struggle:

After we finished up Lena and I walked over to the smoothie bar to refuel and started chatting with my favorite bartender Shep.  This guy has honestly become one of my favorite people in the entire world. He is an incredibly talented artist and one of the nicest and most humble people you will ever meet. He brings a smile to my face every time I talk to him. Today was no exception. He, along with other talented local artists are working on massive installations for the new Clearbrook Center for the Arts in Tackett’s Mill.  As we were talking, he started drawing and behold with only a marker I watched him bring form and motion to life with his hands. I was completely hypnotized. Next thing you know, he hands me the marker and tells me to “add a line”. I was so nervous, I felt like I was just given a piece of gold from King Midas and I was a lonely popper who didn’t know what to do with it. He gave me a lesson on how to Zentangle and I ended up sitting there for the next 2 and a half hours drawing and painting with an incredible artist who I am proud to call my friend. This is the master in action:

That’s right, at our gym we foster healthy bodies and healthy minds. I did Crossfit and then got an art lesson from one of the most talented people I have ever met. What do you do at your gym?  

After I got out of my art bubble and realized what time it was, I left and ran over to Ikea to buy more stuff for a client. The rest of the day flew. I went to Arlington to drop off my clients items, came home, cooked dinner, started writing tonight’s entry, and then headed back to the Gym for Zumba. Lena even decided to stick around for class tonight too! So together we danced our butts off with Frank. It was a wonderful day. EVERYTHING was AWESOME!

To end, I shall leave you with some of Shep’s pieces I hijacked off his Instagram. If you love art and want to be inspired, follow him. His name is Shepherd Norman and handle is “___evol_” (that is three underscores, evol, one underscore). He has so many mediums, it is incredible. Enjoy!

 

 

Day 8: Medicine Ball – Friend of Foe, Jury’s Still Out

Whew, I am EXHAUSTED! I have been nonstop today. 9am on the road to de-stage a home that sold (I swear I must have gone up 40 flights of stairs after that was over), 11am back at the warehouse to unpack, 12:30 PT with Q.

This week we (and by we I mean Q) will be killing me with full body workouts for every training session and continuing on with the two-a-days. I swear Q must be a cyborg. She was walking backwards on the stair climber while I was contemplating the meaning of life, but I will get to that.

This afternoons workout consisted of a treadmill warm-up, 2 rounds of the following: squats with a barbell on my shoulders, lat pulldowns, some other arm press thing, deadlifts, TRX Abs that turned into planking after a mini panic attack, and slamming the medicine ball on the ground while simultaneously doing squats. To end she made me do 10 minutes on what may be the most evil and hateful cardio machine known to man. The stair climber.

So back to one of my nemeses, the TRX strap. Apparently I really hate those things and I am not even sure why. She had me doing abs where your feet are in the straps, and you tuck your knees into your chest. I did this particular move the other night without much issue, but today I only made it through the first 8 and started to go into a panic attack. I tried several times to get back into position, but I couldn’t catch my breath and I could NOT make myself do it. I think Q saw the panic on my face, so she let me hold planks until I collapsed… the moral of this story is, if you have any ideas why this would have happened. Please leave in comments because I am at a complete loss.

Now for the stair climber. As we were ending the second set, Q looks over at the clock and sees we have 15 minutes left. She then informs me that I will be getting on that God forsaken machine…. You remember… I said I climbed 40 sets of stairs this morning, right? Yeah, she knew that and didn’t care. It was the goal for me to remain on this beast for 10 minutes…. And as it turns out, I surprised the shit out of myself and did it. I am fairly certain there are 3 reasons why: 1. Q is next to me walking backwards on the damn thing like it aint nothing (that’s right, I said aint. It was on purpose) so I certainly couldn’t collapse with THAT happening beside me. 2. She was doing me an amazing favor by talking to me about random things to keep my mind off what I was actually doing… perfume, we were talking mostly about perfume and it was awesome. Don’t judge me. 3. She let me go at a turtles pace which still sucked, but sucked a hell of a lot less than it could have.

After she let me off, Q glided while I stumbled over to the counter to look at the schedule for tomorrow where I was informed I will be doing Crossfit at 9am. Holy titties I am crapping my pants. Crossfit scares the hell out of me, but apparently, she thinks I can do it, so that is what I am going to do.

Now I am off to have a delicious home cooked meal with some friends. I will leave you with a letter to my friend/foe the medicine ball.

Dear Medicine Ball,

Why are you so deceiving? You look like you want to be my friend. You are pretty colors, soft, and huggable. Why do you turn into a 400 pound boulder 20 reps in and make me reevaluate everything I believe in? I need you to get it together and remain manageable.

Love Always,

Nicole