May 17, 2011

Catching up on the week

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a week since I last posted! My new project is crazy busy and has barely afforded me adequate time to sleep and work out, let alone blog about it, but here’s the recap of what you missed:

Monday, I had to be out of the house by 4:45am for my 6am flight to Dallas (and that was pushing it). I didn’t want to push my wakeup time to 3am, so I showered the night before and planned to do my Insanity workout at night. I had a solid day at the client and went out to a team dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Iron Cactus, where I couldn’t help but indulge in the best guacamole I’d ever had. Seriously, guys, this stuff was better than Rosa Mexicano – it had a perfect balance of cilantro and lime that made it incredible, and our waiter made it tableside. Unfortunately, I also indulged in a more-than-healthy amount of tortilla chips in order to get the guac into my mouth. For my entree, I ordered the relatively-healthy grilled shrimp fajitas, but the damage was done. I got back to my hotel around 10pm, with some work to do (yuck) and my Insanity workout still to do (double yuck). Here I learned a valuable lesson: Insanity is tough enough on its own; there’s no need to make it worse by having a belly full of Mexican food, and having to stop the video every 10 minutes to alternately try to avoid throwing up, and considering trying to throw up (since I was hoping it might make me feel better). However, the food stayed in place, the workout got done, and I got 7 hours of sleep before getting up early on Tuesday for my next Insanity workout. Switching back and forth between daytime and nighttime wreaks havoc on the “every 24 hours” schedule, but it’s the best I can do.

Tuesday, as I already mentioned, I got up early to do my Insanity, and was so glad that I did – I ended up working till midnight and pretty much crashing into bed the second I was done. I also did a fairly good job with my food choices for the day. However, one of the problems with traveling is that while it’s possible to eat a fairly reasonable number of calories, it’s next to impossible to eat a “diet” amount of calories and make up for any splurges. When I’m at home, I don’t worry so much about a splurge meal here and there, because it’s easy to undo that damage by just cooking healthy stuff for a few days. On the road, it’s so hard to find healthy food that I usually have to settle for just “not horrible for you” food. It makes maintaining my weight possible, but losing weight is so tough! I’m really hoping I can crack the code this time around.

Wednesday, I only got 5 hours of sleep (had to be at work early to prep for our presentation), and I didn’t want to sacrifice another hour of that to get up for my Insanity workout, so I figured I would do it at night. However, what I didn’t count on was that we’d be taking my client out to dinner. I got to choose the location, and instead of selecting something uber-healthy where it would be easy to eat right, dumb me got caught up in the excitement and chose the Meddlesome Moth – a gastropub known for its phenomenal beer list. When we got there, we found out that it was a special night – a representative from Dogfish Head Brewery was there! (Longtime readers of the blog may remember that when I did my Delaware marathon in Rehoboth Beach, we finished about two blocks from the Dogfish Head Brewery, and were treated to all-you-can-drink beer after the race.) We ended up getting the special horizontal tasting from 2007, which included five picks that were incredible with age.

Unfortunately, we also got a smorgasboard of fattening but delicious food. I tried to stay healthy by ordering the mussels, but since everything was made for sharing, I was too easily tempted by some of the more decadent things my colleagues ordered for the table. Oops! Despite having a lot to drink, once back at the hotel, I still didn’t do my Insanity workout (oops again), deciding instead to meet up with another colleague for a drink at the hotel bar (now it’s going from oops to yikes).

When my alarm went off on Thursday morning, I was kicking myself for taking such a devil-may-care attitude: I should not have eaten and drank that much! However, nothing to do but get my butt in gear and start over again. While I had an early morning meeting and was really pressed for time, I squeezed in my Insanity workout, finishing absolutely covered in sweat. I had 30 minutes to shower, get dress, pack up for the week, and get breakfast before I was to meet my boss in the lobby to drive over to our client – tight, but doable. Unfortunately, what I didn’t count on was that there was some kind of water main break, so instead of being able to take a quick shower, I had to try to get myself cleaned up as best as possible with the combination of cups of water from the sink (which was working) and a dribble of water from the showerhead (which was obviously not). Not having access to a shower is pretty much the worst thing that can happen after a round of sweaty Insanity! I ended up getting down to the lobby two minutes late, but as it turned out, my coworkers were about 20 minutes later than I was! I felt like such a rockstar for having gone for extra drinks after the team dinner and still managing to get up early enough to do my workout and be basically on time. I was rewarded for my good karma with a standby seat on the earlier flight home that night – a real miracle given that irrops from the day before had every plane full for the next two days. And it was an exit row window, not some sorry middle seat in the last row – yippee! 🙂

Unfortunately, my good luck ran out just before the end of the day, when I called Fios to get some final details before my installation the next day. You can check out my angry Twitter feed for the full details, but let’s just say I was on the phone with them at midnight on Thursday (with a rep yelling at me and telling me to wait till 2am and call back b/c her system was down), was on the phone with them more all day on Friday (including when the techs were literally at my home but were telling me something different than both the online rep and the rep on the phone), and that I also ended up with a dented TV in my living room (thanks for knocking my TV over in the installation process). But one way or another, I got my Fios installed, and I am actually fairly psyched about my brand new landline (no more dropped calls in my apartment!), the super fast internet speed, and the ability to set my DVR remotely using the internet – the first two are key to being able to work from home, and the third is key to traveling so much and not wanting my DVR to fill up when there are things I’ve watched on the road and can cancel recording.

However, getting to watch things on the road didn’t happen last week and didn’t happen tonight (I can’t wait to catch up on Bachelorette season premiere at some point – total guilty pleasure). We’ll have to see if that’s really a possibility on this crazy project though. Today, I got up at 5am for my flight, got to Dallas and worked till 9pm, and then still had to get in my Insanity workout (4 weeks done!) and also get some more work done at home. Yuck! And double yuck that this is all the post I had time for tonight – hopefully this week will ease up a bit and I can post a bit more.

Happy Monday!

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2 thoughts on “Catching up on the week”

  1. I am proud of you for sticking with Insanity with your busy schedule. You cracked me up with your description of doing Insanity on a full stomach 🙂
    Keep up the good work
    Coach Brett

  2. Bummer about the TV! There is nothing more frustrating than being on a call for 2 days with tech support. Been there – hope to never do it again!

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