See that little star next to my time? It means I have some improvement to do!
Apparently this half marathon put more strain on my body than I realized! So I woke up Monday morning with severe pain in my left food whenever I put weight on it. This is not the first time I have had this injury, but it is much more severe than before. It is caused by tightness in other muscles putting undue strain on the tendon. Or ligament. Or whatever it is. Luckily, “Diane” does not involve any movements that would exacerbate this injury.
I also woke up Monday feeling really, really weak, and I didn’t feel much better when I got to the gym. At first I was afraid I wouldn’t be strong enough even to do the handstand pushups with the full range of motion. After doing three in a row I decided I was good to go, but unfortunately that was only partly true: after about 12 or 14 reps I just was literally not strong enough to get full range of motion on my handstand pushups even though I was only doing singles at that point, hence the star next to my time. So my primary goal for the finale of the challenge is to do the workout properly. Happily, I am quite confident in my ability to be able to do that. Three weeks back I couldn’t do a single handstand pushup and now I can do three in a row. By the time I get to 10 or 12 in a row I should be fine to do the workout properly.
So the highlight of Monday at work was planning for the Purple Heart pilot. I decided to give up caffeine again to go along with the nutrition challenge because what the heck, it’s as good a time as any. I was really feeling it by the afternoon but what we were doing was intellectually stimulating enough that I was fine. Boy is there a lot of work to do, though, it makes my head spin a bit. But the good news is that on Tuesday we had a new employee start who is going to take the lead on Purple Heart at least for a while. One thing I have really learned here is that I can’t do everything myself and actually, I am now at the point where I hesitate to take any work package on myself because I’m concerned that it won’t get done in a timely manner! This is a real challenge for me, though, because I am so used to contributing in that way and so good at contributing in that way that stepping back and basically becoming a full time manager is a bit like having an arm chopped off: what am I really accomplishing at the end of the day? I know the answer, of course, but that disassociation from much of the actual work is hard.
Anyway, Monday night I had a friend over for dinner. Always a good time, although the lack of caffeine really hit me at some point and I got very sleepy! This visit resulted in some great quotes. Among them:
• “Maine? Is that a state?”
• “Diane? Is that a workout?”
OK, maybe you had to be there. But I found it pretty funny. I also realized with some shame that “because Roland says so” isn’t necessarily a convincing argument and it’s kind of bad when my answer to about five questions in a row is basically that. Definitely a cult. But it’s a good cult.
Tuesday and Wednesday found me spend much of the day working on the incubation framework. Which would be a bit mind-numbing if it wasn’t so interesting. I guess it’s possible for one thing to be both. Very excited to start pumping our latest project through the incubator: it’s going to be a very exciting end to the year! We also had a great meeting on social impact indicators for one of our projects and this was really nice because, for one thing, it’s why we’re all here, and for another the collaboration in the meeting I thought was really good. Sometimes everyone is just on, and you can feel it. This was one of those times, and it’s a good feeling.
For some reason, probably related to my foot, I was stressed out Tuesday night so I went to yoga to calm down. The session was about boosting the immune system, which goodness knows I can certainly use: my body needs to heal! Wednesday’s workout was ring dips (I am pretty sure this is the first time I ever did a ring dip with full range of motion), and today’s was press (I repeated my 5 rep max from last week but this time the fifth rep was easy! However, I was tired then and one rep at 1 kilo higher felt hard so I decided to stop). But Thursday’s metcon part of the workout had to be modified due to my injury so that I didn’t run the risk of exacerbating it. I think it made it harder, heck, resistance sprints and double unders aren’t exactly easy but rowing 250m with pistols in between is hard, too! Heck, doing any sort of squat after rowing 250m as hard as you can is hard. Not that I’m whining, of course. The only thing I am really whining about is this injury because I do NOT like being injured, I don’t like modifying workouts because I am injured, and I don’t like worrying about how severe the injury is. Let’s hope it goes away soon.
Wednesday evening was the long-awaited 27 dinner/Hub Cape Town joint event: social media for social change. The event went very well: the speakers were good, the food was good (I hear … all I was able to eat was the veggie plate, minus the hummus!), and most of the wine and beer were consumed. I was not drinking, much to the confusion of my co-workers. But, I met some really interesting people including some of the Cape Town tech entrepreneurs who I either knew digitally only, or had heard of but not met. Very, very, cool: and these cats are sharp. I even wound up leaving with two bottles of Shiraz (which is more than I would have drunk had I been drinking!). Quote of the evening (in response to my comment that I couldn’t possibly just go and TAKE a bottle of wine on my way out): “Of course you can! It’s my wine!” (this is true, he had provided the wine). I very much look forward to the next 27 dinner in two weeks!
Overall there are a lot of things going on at work that are all starting to ramp up right now. Purple Heart is getting going now that we have someone to focus on it, FoodTents is focusing on key deliverables, the Hub had a great event and is gearing up for a formal launch in just over two weeks. We even had a great presentation on our potential new space at the Waterfront today. It’s pretty cool to have a bunch of balls in the air at the same time, or what was that metaphor, playing a bunch of different sports all at the same time on the same field!
One more odd little tidbit now that I am fully onto this diet. So I am missing caffeine more than alcohol, oddly enough. But what I am missing more than either, at the moment, is sugar! Which is odd because I don’t really have a sweet tooth but between visitors and stress and illness (I always eat chocolate when I’m sick) and the fact that I knew I was starting an 8 week strict diet I wound up eating more sugar than normal and as a result now that I am not eating any sugar I am getting cravings! I know they will go away soon, though, and good riddance.
To the end of fixing my injury I am now going to do some stretching and rolling and trigger point work. There is this point in my stomach that is incredibly sore and when I press it my foot feels better. Amazing how the body works; but mine really needs to stop fighting me. It’s like it’s angry or something! Apparently half marathons are not my thing…
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