Identifying My Weakness...

For the rest of February, I kept to my training schedule pretty well, but found that I have ZERO motivation on the weekends! I grocery shop on Saturday, so I never want to do it then. On Sundays, it’s my chill time, so I don’t even want to get out of my jammies. And sadly, I don’t think I did much on the weekends, looking back at last month. I have to do better there!

Anyway, Disney did this really cool thing for Leap Day called One More Disney Day where Magic Kingdom would be open for 24 hours.

We decided to skip down to WDW for a few days and enjoy the festivities. Needless to say, there was no training that week! (But I can say that I walked for about 12 hours in ONE day, so that could be counted as endurance training!)

I took the following Friday off to recover and ended up calling the entire week from 2/27 to 3/2 a wash. Nothing was done.  Now I’m playing catch up, which isn’t going too bad. Yesterday I did 45 minutes on the treadmill with a total of 5-6 minutes of running thrown in.  I’m getting there!

I don’t have any training today – I have a rescheduled massage that I missed last week!  Ahhhh, relaxation, here I come!

Why Lazy Got Nekkid in Front of a Chick

On the day of my first massage therapy session, I was very nervous. The office was in a beautiful old house (which I covet!) that had been turned into a holistic healing and women’s center – imagine Sheldon (from The Big Bang Theory) walking in and seeing crystals and Georgia O’Keefe paintings and hemp scarves and Female Empowerment plaques and you get an idea of what I was thinking when I got there.

Center For Balance - 1705 NW 6th Street

 I took a deep breath and followed my little massage lady to her room and we chatted. After I recanted the headache hell I had been living with, she told me to go ahead and lie down. I’m sure I sounded so meek when I asked her how naked I needed to be, but at least I got to keep my panties! Getting nekkid for the first time in that room was a milestone in and of itself!

<cue porn music here> I stripped down and crawled onto the table and covered myself like a wedding night virgin, waiting for her to come back in.  She began stoking the large muscles that line the spine, and after about 10 minutes or so of working on my back, she asked again how many visits I was prescribed. I told her six and she said, “Good, we’re going to need all of them, and then some!”  I think my therapist just said I was fucked up.…  I don’t think I relaxed one bit that entire hour with this little woman rubbing all over me with cocoa butter – but damn, I smelled like chocolate for hours, so that was cool.

I continued to see her 5 more times before going back to my doctor for a follow-up.  I was re-prescribed therapy, on a bi-weekly basis. I’ve changed what time I go, too. Now I go after work, since she has p.m. hours, and that’s a nice way to end the day! I’m all mellow when I get home and ready to curl up on the couch or into bed.

Anyway, I know you are all like, what’s this got to do with anything?  Relax, I’m getting there….

Western Medicine Can't Save Me - Bring on the Hokum!

In the fall of 2010, I finally got a new job working for the county government.  I was happy to be working again – I’m not someone who enjoys NOT working.  I’ve been here for over a year and I’m pretty happy. It’s a job and a paycheck, but it sure would be nice to get a raise!

But anyway, all that is just background.  During the time I was unemployed, our family would go and do Disney for free – we’d go to DTD, watch Wishes from the Poly or TTC and dream about going back.  At some point while reading DisBoards, I learned about the Princess Half Marathon.  It sounded fun, but at over 200 pounds, with smoker’s lungs and a wonky cardio system, there was no way I’d be able to do it – I figured it was only for runners, anyway. I put it out of my mind and forgot all about it.  Also in 2009, since I had no job, I was able to go to the University of Florida’s homecoming parade. My daughter and I saw the runners from the Gator Gallop and I joked that maybe next year I’d run in that. Yeah right! 

One day in early 2011 at a meeting at work, one of my coworkers – who is over 40 and JUST had a baby a MONTH before, told me that she was going to be out of the office in a few weeks so that she could do the Princess.  I kind of looked at her and said to myself – “WTF? She’s running right after having a baby (and a C-Section, at that!)? What the hell excuse do YOU have, fat ass?”  After that, it kind of stayed in my head, as a ‘One Day’ kind of goal, but nothing I was seriously ready to go after yet.

2011 continued uneventfully until the end of summer.  (More background info – I have suffered migraines for decades).  I experienced an extremely debilitating headache that lasted for almost a week and I finally said Fuck It – I gotta find a doctor that will actually TREAT these things. I’ve been told many things from other doctors:  They aren’t that bad, you only get them because you are fat, take hot baths, bullshit like that. I’ve had doctors laugh at me when I told them I thought they were weather-related.

In August 2011, I went to my doctor’s office and saw a wonderful woman who was a headache sufferer herself and after she listened to me describe the hell I live with (and I cried a bit while explaining them because they have gotten that bad), she told me that she thought the majority of them were actually tension headaches!  She wrote me a prescription for a migraine med and for massage therapy. I was to go once a week for 6 weeks and report back to the doc.

Now, I know most of you don’t know me, but believe me when I say that I am a very LOGICAL person. I am a firm believer in Western Medicine. If it hurts, take a pill until it doesn’t hurt any more. If it’s broken, use tools and fix it. Massage, yoga, acupuncture, weird teas – this is not medicine. This is HOKUM. But, by this point, I was ready for hokum.  After a few days, I worked up the courage (yes, I was scared) and called the therapist she recommended. The lady had a funny name, which reinforced my idea of “hokum”.  I set up an appoint to go before work the next week.