Around the World Challenge Wrap Up.... Finally

Note to self (and anyone who will listen): do not get sick while completing a major gym challenge & starting a new job... but if you must don't be stubborn and deny it until it turns into bronchitis. Yeah, that pretty much sums up what I've managed to do to myself in the last ten days.

The challenge has been done for over a week & I'm just now getting to updating you on the outcome... geez I told ya I'm waaaayyyyy behind here, lol. Honestly, I work well under pressure (the deadline drives me), but I HATE getting behind. And I've been missing blogging like crazy... my body says rest though... and I've been trying to listen.

As for the results... I don't have full results. You'll also notice I don't have post challenge pics - have to find time for someone to take them still, lol. The guy that did my measurements at the end did not do them in the same places as the girl who did them at the beginning & he insisted on measuring over my clothes. I was really frustrated because I wanted to see the true numbers. With his method of measuring I lost about 2" each from my waist & hips. I can tell that I lost inches in areas that they didn't measure for the Challenge. My weight loss was 6 lbs during the six weeks of the challenge. Not too bad, but not quite what I was hoping for. However, I do want to make it really clear that I increased my calorie intake considerably during the Challenge. I didn't want to rapidly drop weight in a manner that I can't sustain for the long term. And as much as I'd like to say I could... I don't think three hour workouts six days a week is something I can maintain.

The awards ceremony - complete with lunch - was Saturday. Now before I talk about the prizes, I have to tell you all I was FLOORED when they carried in 12 large pizzas & bread sticks from Little Caesars!!! Seriously, here we are at the gym challenge awards & they serve pizza???? Am I the only one that thinks that was a little out of place? I did not eat pizza, but had three bread sticks (they were the little ones) with fruit & veggies.

Now for the awards part... my name was chosen three times! But you can only keep one prize - I ended up with a $50 gift certificate for a local antique store. I'm totally happy with that since I love antiques & vintage stuff. My other choices when I was chosen were for a restaurant or rounds of golf. Once again, I have stop and ask why I would want to reward myself with food?!? These prizes are from "corporate sponsors" of the Challenge... so I understand there will be a variety of prizes, but still. My BFF Erika (yes the one I've been so frustrated with recently) won a family bowling package (which includes pizza, go figure). She was also the Women's Body Composition winner for our location! She was totally shocked, but I wasn't too surprised because I could see a big difference in her from the beginning.

Erika & I were two of only six people to complete the entire challenge for our gym location. The other location that combined with us for the awards had five people complete the entire thing. So out of 200 participants only 11 people finished the whole thing! I was a little bummed because they have decided to stop giving out the individual plaques for those who do the whole thing. I was looking really forward to adding another one to the wall in my office... but they are going to do a wall display inside the gym with all the names on it. I guess that's cool too because I can look at it every time I workout in the gym.

Kind of a cool experience. I was in Walmart with The Husband on Sunday night & two people stopped me to congratulate me on finishing the whole challenge! They were both people that completed part of it. I think it totally caught The Husband by surprise... which was amusing considering his general attitude about the whole thing. :-)

I had this whole post in my mind about my reflections from the challenge... but since I'm playing catch up its time to abbreviate I suppose. Conquering a huge goal brings a huge sense of empowerment... but as I've said before there is a feeling of peace that comes with it as well. Not only peace, but a feeling self-security... knowing that you can do what you need to do for yourself.

Beyond that the biggest thing I'm left with this year is a "stop the I can't" mentality because... I CAN. Let me explain... I'm one of those people that gets bored on any given piece of cardio equipment after a short time. 20 minutes on the elliptical & I'm ready to bolt... treadmill is about 10 minutes at best. This has led me (and I've heard others say it too) to say "I can't do more than 30 minutes." Well the simple truth is I CAN do quite a bit longer than that IF I choose to. Believe it or not, I discovered that the first 30 minutes is the most difficult. By the time you hit 30 minutes all of those little aches and pains that we so often use as excuses for stopping have subsided (or I suspect numbed away, lol). It actually got to the point where it was easier to stay on a single machine for a full hour than to split that hour between a pair of machines.

One other thing that I really noticed this year was the difference that skipping breaks can make. For example, I used to do the StairMaster in 15 minute increments - with a two minutes break in between - for a total of 30-45 minutes. I did this to catch my breath and let my heart rate recover a little. But when I would start again, it was hard to get going. I think those little breaks gave my brain just enough time to tell my legs that they were tired of climbing. Midway through the challenge, I started going all the way down to level one for my recovery periods rather than stopping. This helped immensely and I was able to climb for much longer periods... up to two hours on one crazy night.

The overall take away from the Challenge (barring injury & illness).... WE CAN DO ANYTHING WE SET OUR MINDS TO... its just a matter of being brave (or crazy) enough to set our minds to things that will truly push us to new levels!

Now that I've written an entire short story, its time to take the boy one to therapy & then off to be a "good" government employee for a few hours. My "advisers" have weighed in & with any luck I'll be back to share my next "crazy challenge" with you all soon!

Btw - My one and only May goal is to make healthy choices in restaurants... more to come on that later. :)