HIYA KARATE CHOP!!!

Okay, okay, so I forgot to blog yesterday. Sheesh. I'm a busy gal. I'm actually amazed it wasn't until 7pm tonight that my mother called to say 'Where is your post?!' I would have expected her to call last night.

In fact, last Friday Mum called asking where my post was...apparantly she felt I didn't need a rest day. Come to think of it, this almost feels like when I was a little kid and I had to take accordian lessons and I was asked if I practiced. By the way, who the hecks idea was it for me to take accordian lessons anyways?!

I must say, I can understand the need for an update as the parental unit live in another province; therefore, this is a way to keep up with the goings on of their only child, or as I refer to myself, their loving daughter.

So here's the update. Yesterday I managed to bandage up the ongoing festering wound that once was a blister in order for me to get my bike workout in. I had a great workout and am continually impressed with how good I feel after each workout! I was still feeling a bit of muscle fatigue from my ski on Sunday, so opted to do a short core workout titled 'Ab Ripper X'. Now if that title doesn't make you want to workout, I don't know what will. Although the workout was short, the title was apt and I felt the burn!

Today I was back in the pool. After reading some other posts I am thankful that I did not have to put up with hairballs, gack, wet tissue, gag, floating bandaids, spew, or anything of the sort. (My bandaid stayed on thank you very much!)

I did however almost get kicked in the face by one of my bestest friends, Leslie. She is a great swimmer, so I often try to keep up. It's good for me - or so I keep telling myself. I was doing intervals of 50 m drill / 50 m sprints today and on one of my sprints was hell bent on catching up to Les.

I got to the far end of the pool, pushed off, sped ahead and EEEEK! had Leslies feet almost kicking under my chin. BRAKE, BRAKE, BRAKE!! Turns out she did a 25 m swim, then went into a drill so had slowed considerably. That'll teach me not to sight!

Again I had an amazing workout. I seriously hope this is how the majority of the season goes. I feel so much stronger than I did at the same time last year - it's tres cool. I think part of the reason is having a couple of seasons under my belt now so I'm pushing myself more. Last year was also a major turning point for me in the mind game so I know I can take it both physically and mentally. For some reason I feel like growling now...well, maybe more of a Tim Taylor growl.

Total distance today was 2300 m, in an hour. Oh, I forgot to mention one of the drills - a personal favourite of mine - the one arm swim. For someone who's butt wants to sink down to the bottom of the pool and therefore must flail all limbs in order to stay afloat, I am always amazed that I do so well at this one. I really hope nothing happens to one of my arms, but if it does at least I know I can swim with one arm! Yay!

A shout out to all the peeps giving me tips on how to keep track of laps in the pool - thank you! I'm almost embarassed to say that it's not the long swims that I'm losing track of....I actually lose track doing 100 m. Yes, I'm hanging my head in shame. It's just that I'll be swimming along my merry way and remembering what lap I'm on, then I'll think about my technique and focus on that, and that's long enough for my sieve of a mind to forget where I was. So really, it's possible that I swim an extra 50-100 m each workout. Sigh...

As mentioned above, the festering wound that once was a blister, is still healing. Slowly. Very slowly. The red part is half the size, and it's itchy. I think that means it's healing?! But I still can't put on a shoe with a back, so there was no way I could run tonight. One guess what I did instead?! Yup! I flipped through the old P90X DVDs, which are really paying off, and chose one that I thought would give me some good cardio - Kenpo X.

What's that mean? It means Law of the Fist baby! (This is where I do my Bruce Lee war cry...WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH)

Have I mentioned I love martial arts?? It all started when I was a wee lass in Japan watching samarai movies. I then graduated to Bruce Lee movies, which are still my favs. Then I moved on to Jackie Chan. My near brush with fame came when I was a martial arts student and was called to do stunts in a martial arts film. Unfortunately they needed five foot nine of fury, rather than my five foot two of fury. Yes, I'm still bitter. I'm sure I could have done the stunts in stilettos!

But I digress. So I put the DVD in and prepared to be slayed as I had with the plyometrics DVD. However, slayed I was not. This dude has nothing on my former master instructor! All was good though, I punched and kicked for about 50 minutes and realized that my core is way stronger than it was when I was actually in martial arts. Translation: I have more stability when punching and kicking - so I can do those things harder. Very cool.

Look out world, the inner ninja princess has surfaced. HIYA KARATE CHOP!

Peace out my friends!