It's time to start....RUNNING!!!

Last weekend was the Mudhen 5K race in Longmont.  Not being a runner, let alone a distance runner, I did not participate in the race (and after waking up to a steady SNOW, I was even more thankful I hadn't committed). However, many friends from Alpha and some families from school did run, and I was able to catch the tail end of many of their races.  Kathy competed for the first time in quite awhile and ended up 4th in her division.  One KB student from Alpha, Stephanie, won her division.  Several others were there running with their kids or supporting their friends.  But probably the most inspiring runner was another kickboxing friend, Erika, who was doing her first 5K.  She is as strong as they come, very dedicated to coming to class and has made monumental improvements across the board in her overall fitness.  But she is not a runner, and yet she decided to set a goal and see it through.  And she finished, and it was really cool to see that and all the support she was getting.

Well, the end of those races is always great, with people congratulating each other and just hanging out and realizing they just did a pretty intense workout, and now they are done and they can enjoy the aftermath.  Kathy was looking for more races to run, which is beyond awesome, because quite often she is just too busy or tired to train or compete in stuff like this, and she is actually very good at it.  She found a half marathon being run for the first time in Longmont this July, and she thinks that would be a good race to train for.  She talked to some of our friends about it, and they showed some interest.  And I will probably look back at this decision as one of the most whacked out decisions I have ever made, but I told her I would give it a go myself. 

Yes, I am planning to run the Redline 13.1 in Longmont on July 16th (happy 40th birthday to me).  Let me just list a few things that are fundamentally flawed about my decision:

1.  I am not a runner.  I have never enjoyed running.  And I have never been very good at it.

2. I have no endurance.  I swam in HS and college, and when I was in top shape, I was a SPRINTER.  I can hang for four laps in a pool.  13 miles on a path....um, not so much.

3.  Did you see what time this thing starts?  6:30 a.m.!  I am never up at 6:30 a.m, but on July 16th, I not only get to wake up at least 90 minutes earlier than that, but then I get to go run (which I hate) for 13 miles (which takes endurance). 

4.  I don't remember the last running race I competed in.  Pretty sure it was a 5K.  Pretty sure it was at least 10 years ago.  Pretty sure the elevation of the race was about 50 feet above sea level.   

5.  My knees and feet have been giving me lots of trouble lately when doing martial arts.  I imagine 13.1 miles  of foot pounding on a paved trail is not going to give my knees any warm fuzzies.

All that said, there is one thing that I have going for me.  I've never raced that far before, but it will be a challenge, and one that I'm not yet convinced I can achieve.  I fully expect to suck, and I fully expect that the race will nearly kill me, but I also expect that there will be a lot of support for me and my other friends who plan to do this, and that will be all it takes.  By the time I turn 40, I hope to at least be able to say that I've run a half marathon, and anyone who knows me at all will know that if I can say those words honestly, hell must certainly have frozen over.  One of my favorite motivational quotes is "Pain is temporary.  Pride is forever."  No doubt.  Time to bring it.....

Certified

 That's certiFIED, not certiFIABLE.  I just received my "AFPA Cardio Kickboxing Instructor" certification in the mail today, so I'm pretty pumped.  This is my second AFPA certification, along with "Certified Childrens Fitness Specialist".  Almost looks like I might know what I'm doing when I'm "encouraging" my kickboxing class to do a few more pushups or working with preschoolers on their throwing and kicking techniques. 

A couple of years ago, when I realized that I would enjoy working in the fitness industry, I looked into which certifications actually meant something.  There are dozens of fitness certifications out there, and from what I've researched, there are maybe half a dozen or so that are actually worth anything.  That brought me to the NSCA, which offers a Certified Personal Trainer cert (for those looking to get into a personal training gig), and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (for those who want to design exercise programs for athletes).  I liked the way the CSCS cert sounded, and thought that it could be useful for designing martial arts training programs.  I got my study materials and went to work studying.  The test takes several hours and is closed book.  Needless to say, without a degree in exercise or fitness or anatomy, the material has been pretty difficult.  And without any real "need" to get this cert, my studying tapered off and I eventually just put it on the shelf after about 9 months.

When I started to teach kickboxing, I looked around to see if there was a KB cert that actually meant something, and my search lead me to the American Fitness Professionals and Associates (AFPA).  They did indeed have a cardio kickboxing cert, and from what I could tell, it is a pretty respected certification.  In addition, the AFPA has a whole bunch of other certs available, including the Certified Childrens Fitness Specialist (which I thought would be great for the Tiny Tigers class I was helping teach).  I got the study materials for the two AFPA certs, which have a 6 month deadline, but are open book tests.  The CCFS cert was over 100 short answer questions and a couple of essays.  I received that cert in October of last year.

The KB cert included a true/false test, and I also had to send in a video of me teaching a class according to the guidelines of the AFPA cardio kickboxing program.  I finished the test pretty quickly, but in typical style, procrastinated on the video for several months.  Eventually, the perfect opportunity arose for me to shoot the video, so I jumped on it.  I had help from 4 of my incredible students (Erika, Amber, Carey and Kathy) to be my "class", and had another friend (Ashley, who is pursuing this same cert as well) actually run the camera as I "taught".  After a couple of hours, things went off without a hitch, and I was able to compile almost an hour of footage to send in to be evaluated.  The materials said to expect 4 weeks before I hear if I pass or failed, and for 4 weeks, I went to the mailbox every day like a high school senior waiting to see if he got into the college of his choice.  And today, almost 4 weeks to the day, my envelope arrived, and I passed. 

I'm lucky to have friends who were willing to help me out with things like this, as I could not have completed this certification without their help.  A heartfelt THANK YOU to all of them, and I'll see you in class again soon!

Spring Cleaning

The last couple of weekends, we've been doing some serious spring cleaning around our house.  I used to be a hoarder (and my son apparently has inherited that trait from me BIG TIME), but I've gotten much better at going through piles of clutter and realizing that some of it really is meaningless and just taking up space.  Today, I went through several boxes in our crawlspace that had all kinds of goodies in them from my youth.  Here is some of what I found:

- All of my old swimming trophies and medals.


- Newspaper clippings from my childhood days as a swimmer and baseball player (I had a .432 average one of the years I played and won my team's golden glove award one year).

- Pages and pages of "progress sheets" from all of my swimming events over about 9 years from elementary school through high school.  I kept some of the ones from state championships and nationals.

- Swim meet heat sheets.  Dozens of them.  Found a whole lot of names from the past I had forgotten about but used to compete against frequently.

- Award certificates.  Among them:  4 time Georgia swimming all star, Augusta Swim League team record holder in 50 free and 100 fly, high school letter in swimming, highest academic honors as a freshman in high school, high school foreign language award, and best of all....Mrs. Wix 3rd grade Green Dot Reading Program completion.  GREEN DOT baby!!

- An AWESOME collection of sea shells.  My grandparents used to own a beach house in Clearwater FL, and my dad and brother and I used to spend hours combing the beach for shells.  The beach was covered with mainly broken bits of them, so we eventually got to the point where we only kept the really cool ones.  My mom has a bunch of them at her house in GA, and I've got a box of really cool ones here now and have no idea how to go about displaying them.

- I found a body fat analysis I had done at a national swimming camp when I was 16.  I weighed 138 lbs, and my BF% was 7.3%.  Needless to say, I've added substantially to both of those numbers.


- My age group swimming sweat shirt.  In Illinois, many teams gave out patches for various achievements that we would have sewn onto our sweatshirts.  The best swimmer usually had the most patches.  Becca might fit into this sweatshirt now.

I always love going through my old stuff and remembering the old times and the people I shared them with.  I'm friends with many of them on Facebook now, and some I'd forgotten about for at least 30 years.  And seeing all of the swim meet papers made me realize again how fortunate I was to have parents who didn't mind driving (sometimes hours) and spending entire weekends sitting on hard bleacher seats on a hot pool deck in air that smelled like chlorine.  (Or if they did mind, they never let on that they did).  It was fun to see the notes and splits my dad had written on the heat sheets. 

The stuff that was just taking up space has been removed from these stashes, and I've got a couple of very manageable bins now with many of my childhood memories waiting to be cracked open again during the next big cleaning or when my kids get curious about stuff I did when I was their age.  I can relax easier now knowing that my life is a little less cluttered than it was at the beginning of the day.