Backsliding and Panic

Since I still can't exercise without inducing coughing fits and making myself worse, I'm not only frustrated, but not progressing.

I woke up this morning and realized that my next triathlon is less than a month away.

Holy bad words, I've got to get my butt in gear.

I'm not doing this next triathlon with any delusions of winning or placing. Not finishing last would be nice, since I now feel like I'm past the "doing it to see if I could finish it" phase, but from what I gather about this particular event, the people who tend to sign up are SERIOUS, so finishing not last might not be an option for me.

So in just under one month, I need to do the following:

Get my 500 yard swim down to 11 minutes (I'm at 11:28 as of my last timed effort).
Run a full 3.1 miles (I'm at 2 miles, at a 15-minute mile pace).
Recondition my "biker butt" since the saddle on my bike is ridiculously hard and I'm probably not going to get a new saddle before the race.

So I'd better get my unconditioned (in more ways than one) butt off the computer and in gear.

Even if I do end up in a coughing fit.

I had intended to go workout at the gym near my daughter's gymnastics, but we couldn't seem to get moving, and I barely got to her gymnastics lesson on time.

I did actually go and tumble on the tumbletrack (a 40 foot trampoline with a resi-pit at the end) for a little while.

Good news: I was able to jump without much pain. Bad news: If I don't get into better shape, my years at trying to jump back into "playing" on the equipment are extremely limited--and could be months if I'm not careful and injure myself.

I'd been tumbling for only about five minutes and was TOTALLY winded (and high on adrenaline). I glanced at the clock and noticed it was about 20 minutes until the end of my daughter's class. I set a little "goal" for myself of continuing to tumble until the end of her class.

One of the little boys in her class saw me and said, "WOW! I didn't know she could do THAT!"

My daughter immediately piped up, "That's MY mommy!"

Ah, so nice to have her be proud of me. I will have to treasure this because IF I could still do these tricks in 10 years (which would make me hugely proud of myself), I'm sure it will instead highly embarrass her.

I did a few old tricks, including a roundoff back layout. I was really tempted to try a layout full, except that I had visions of recreating the scene from the movie "Stick It" where Jeff Bridges ends up needing 9-1-1 assistance--on that exact skill.

15 minutes into my tumbling (and 10 minutes short of my little mini-goal), I was getting quite tired. In terms of endurance pushing myself, I could have kept going. In terms of safety; this is where I can actually DO moderation and was getting kind of worried trying to figure out how many more passes I could live through uninjured, and what easier skills I would have to start doing to be able to keep going.

Thing is, I was already at a pretty basic level in terms of what I could do on the Tumbletrack.

Then my daughter's class rotated to trampoline.

And probably saved me from hurting myself by kicking me off.

Still, I did the following skills:
Roundoff back tuck
Roundoff back layout
Roundoff back tuck onto 24" elevated surface
Roundoff doubleback timer onto 24" elevated surface
Front tuck
Front handspring front tuck to butt
Front handspring front tuck to feet!
Front tuck to 24" elevated surface

Most of them I did more than once, too.

Before you get too impressed, I also managed to do a front tuck to my feet when I 37 weeks (just over 8 months) pregnant.

In other words, for me, some of these skills I've been able to do for nearly 3 decades, so they are almost as intuitive as riding a bicycle.

Unfortunately, that was my entire workout for today.