Unexpected challenge

When I went into the gym today, little did I expect to take part in a Challenge that was going on. I knew about it, but decided to give it a miss because of the set of exercises that they had advertised. I am not good with full push ups. Knee push up – OK. And my arm strength isn’t good enough for pull ups. I am working on it. There was a total of 6 exercises and we were supposed to do them in serial fashion and see how long we took for all 6 of them. Now, why would I go and sign up for this when I have joined gym after a long break and still working on my arm strength?

My gym instructor thought otherwise. When I went in today, all mentally prepped for my dumbbells workout (today is the arms day, y’all), she comes in with a clipboard and a paper and says ‘Lets do this challenge’. I was like ‘why ?’. She was like ‘why not?’ And then she says ‘I have belief in you. You can do it’. I did a eye roll and one more for good measure and told her that not to expect me to excel in it. I know all about their BS of positive and motivational talks. Been there, heard that a lot with my other instructor, and have done that to others too. There is no kidding me with that line, girl. Since the push ups were an issue for me, she replaced it with burpees. Now, I had no choice as to give it a try.

25 knee pushups

10 burpees

25 box jumps

50 full sit ups

50 skipping or jump rope

500 m running in the treadmill at 9 kmph speed and no gradient

I completed them all in 8.55 mins. She was very happy about that, even though there were better results than that. I told her that I am going home now that my workout for the day was over 😉 Once I got that done, I felt good. That wasn’t bad compared to the standard I held myself. I could have done better, if I had done some more practice at home or the previous day. But that’s all right. I made sure I maintained my form too. Box jumps literally tired me down and I had to slow down a bit when I was doing those. I used to hate burpees. May be still do, but at least when it came to this challenge I got that done. All in all I felt good after being challenged so suddenly and especially when I wasn’t mentally prepared. After that she told me that this was just my warm up and I had to do the day’s workout. 🙄  I had to cut two of my exercises from my day’s workout to be able to complete it on time and be back for work. Anyone want to give it a try? If you do, let me know how it went for you.

When I reached home, may be it was the feeling that I did good, I was craving for something very sweet. Like a Pavlova which was available on a fresh food site to order. But every single time I tried (and I tried for close to 5 times from different browsers), the page would error out the moment I select the sweet. Divine Intervention, you think ? I had to settle for some dates to satisfy my sweet craving for the day.

This photograph was taken during one of our Zumba workouts in a Music bar. Photo credits to a friend of a friend who was using my camera to try his photographic skills.Will be doing Zumba this weekend after a very long time. Getting excited already.

Browsing the entries for the challenge

Now that I finished my A-Z book title series before the actual A-Z Challenge started, I was wondering what other’s are writing about for this month’s challenge. The day has just started for the Western Hemisphere so there will be more posts coming along. Until then, here are some links which I found to be interesting.

Rob is writing about The House of Plantagenet and he started it with Aquitaine.

Sandra is doing poems and she started it with Ant

Joshua is writing letters as part of the theme to his daughter and he starts it with Amazed & Altered. It was a very lovely read.

JK is writing about ‘Places to visit in India’ and it starts with Alleppey in Kerala and so is Joanne, who is writing about her travel adventures. She starts it with Australia.

Good luck to all those who are participating in this challenge.

 

 

WPC: Alphabet

A couple of photographs for this week’s photography challenge: Alphabet

Photograph of a typewriter I found in a restaurant display

My handwriting 😉

A wall hanging I have at home

When I almost missed my dream

I am still getting back to the daily rhythm after the vacation and haven’t had time to start writing my travelogue, but I will take this week’s SoCS as an opportunity to write about something I almost missed doing but ended up doing it successfully. My first ever Sky Diving.
When I went to US I did have a few things in my mind that I really wanted to do. Never got to do any of those. Like visiting vegas or Point Reyes or doing the thing my mom wouldn’t approve etc etc. The one and only thing I had planned and I ended up doing was the sky diving. Even that was because I was very adamant to get it done.

Here is what happened. I was supposed to book my sky diving in Monterey with my friend. But then things didn’t go as was planned and my friend had to be somewhere else and I was left alone 😦 I found out the one place that was closer to Redwood Shores , where I was staying , and that was BayArea Sky diving at Byron Airport. I had it booked for Friday early morning 10 am so that I can go for my long drive mini-vacation to Fort Bragg on Sunday without any tensions and if I am alive by then. I was a little scared to go ahead and do it alone, to be honest. With my history of breaking bones and body parts I wasn’t sure if this was a recipe for another disaster and what if something goes wrong and I don’t have anyone near me to help me out. That was when they called me back to inform that the Friday bookings have been cancelled and they had to reschedule it to another day. I was wondering if it was the Universe giving me signs to not go ahead with it. But then I ignored my insecurities for that one time and asked them to book it for Sunday morning because Sunday afternoon I was about to leave for Fort Bragg and that was a 4 hour drive and Saturday was already full according to their schedule. I was this close to not getting my dream come true. Finally Sunday morning, got up early, packed my stuff for my 3 day mini vacation, went to the Sky diving area after an hour’s drive, got the sky diving done with as much strength I could muster, drove to Fort Bragg from there all on a high 🙂

One time, I was proud of myself and my stubbornness. No wonder I am a Taurean 🙂 This year’s Sky Diving was my treat for myself for my birthday that went by before I left for my vacation.

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “almost.” Use it however you’d like. Have fun!

SoCS Badge by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

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HarsH ReaLiTy Challenge!-Daily Life in Bangalore

When I saw OM’s HarsH ReaLiTy Challenge! and thought of may be trying it, this is how I felt.

So here we go with a very short version of my daily life here in Bangalore 🙂

When I woke up today, the day was so bright and sunny (above 30 C) (at 9 am in fact),

but guess what, it had just rained a few minutes ago. I did indeed get up because of the constant pitter patter and got to see the above picture.

Last week it was very cold and the temperature was within 20’s and this week its supposed to go beyond 35. Yeah, we wake up to some crazy weather here in Bangalore. The day I decide to use my two-wheeler it pours , go figure.
Why am I always so tempted to work from home (aka wfh) (other than the reasons that sometimes I don’t want to see anyone at office and just concentrate on my work, or just because I can do a wfh just for the heck of it) , it is this. The crazy traffic out here Yesterday my return journey at 9 pm took me an hour for 4 kms. Yeah.. you do the math.

That doesn’t mean Bangalore doesn’t have its perks. But most of the weekday life is spent on battling the weather and the traffic 🙂