Home exercise enthusiasts may 5

[Valerie226]

I'll start this off and try to keep identities straight here. allison, congrats on the loose capris, too bad for you stacy. better luck this week!. and too bad for me. tight jeans. Yech. The older you get the less flexibility there is in a few extra calories. they don't slough off, they stick like glue.
On that happy note..... I had a real active weekend. We went xc skiing saturday. we can only drive up to 1600 feet elevation, then tons of snow. there are loads of blow downs across the road before that. we carry a chain saw. we saw (just enough to clear a route) the trees and drag them to the side of the road. This is A LOT of work. The forest service should be doing this but :( sadly they rarely do. so it took us an hour plus just to drive to where we could ski. then about a 4 hour trip up and back down. not great conditions but pleasant, lots of birds singing and interesting animal tracks. Sunday we did our 3 regular hour 34 mile bike ride for exercise.

I got my new treadmill friday and tested it for 3 minutes & it seems OK. I'd already exercised friday so didn't check it thoroughly but will today. Hope everyone had a great weekend. It's finally(!!!) seeming springlike here with temps up to 60 and some actual sunshine. makes me want to garden more than exercise but I'll do what I need to do. It's been a couple weeks ( with vacation) without any weight workouts so time to get sore!.

[srahndennis]

Valerie -- You are so right about the extra calories! I've had a few too many of those lately. Wow!! You were not kidding about an active weekend. I think the forest service owes you! Glad you are seeing signs of spring. We are, too. It's been in the 70's - 80's for quite a while -- very nice for Texas this time of year. They are predicting our first 90 degree day on Thursday. We'll see. It's been nice not having to use the A/C yet -- I sure hope that continues!

I did get a workout in yesterday -- 4DS High Intensity Step. It was fun and sure felt good. Nothing today but I'll be back at it tomorrow.

[engineer]

Hey everyone. I’ve been very delinquent lately. DM had a stint put in her remaining ureture and has begun chemo. She has completed 3 sessions (every Monday) and this coming Monday is a ‘holiday’ as she has a week off from chemo. The first two sessions were a nice drug and she didn’t get sick. Just a headache that took some time to get rid of and slight body aches. The last drug really wholped her. In face her BP was down to 80/60 which is why she was dizzy and lacked energy. But one IV later she was feeling super. I call every night and talk to her – I figure it’s the least I can do to help. She has lots of friends who offer to help with stuff around the house and to take her to Dr. appts so that is good.

As for me I haven’t worked out regularly for quite a while. My knees are bad, and the stress with everything has my fibro flying off the charts. Stress from worrying about her, about the economy/jobs (if you’ve ever been let go you know that fear never goes away); worrying about my eyes…yes I contacted a surgeon to see if I can get my eyes corrected surgically. He said I’m not a candidate for lasik but I might be for PRK. I should know tomorrow and if I am then I will have the surgery tomorrow. And Scott wants the horses bred again to the stud in ID which means another rush road trip out there. It’s a long drive and the diesel is expensive. Also we will have to board Baby Lucy somewhere as she can’t be left home alone so I’m a little stressed over that. And my eating has been bad but is getting better.

We went to the MN Horse Expo and I’ve decided two things from being there. I want to learn to ride side-saddle. With a draft horse that should be more comfortable than astride right? And I want to be a foster home for rescue horses. I figure we have the space and it would make me feel like I was helping something! Scott said OK so we are working through the process of determining what we need to do to get signed up.

So once I feel up to it after surgery I will get back to working out. I have to be ready for Cathe’s STS when it arrives right!

I’ve been lurking and you all seem to be doing great things. I am cheering you all on – if you listen carefully you can hear me.

Michelle

[Valerie226]

Michelle, glad to see you're around. good luck on the upcoming eye surgery. I have to admit to being squeamish about eye procedures. I've had good luck with soft contacts and am old enough now that I'll wait for cataract surgery, assuming I get them like most do. but I know loads of people who had great results with the surgery so hope it goes well!! If you wear glasses, I understand...I don't know how anyone exercises with glasses on??
sounds like your mom is doing well and has a support system locally. Hope she continues on the recovery road.

But you got me confused on the side saddle thing. I've ridden a little but not lately so please explain... does anyone do side saddle? Why? Excuse my asking, but as the veteran of a couple of spills off horses while hanging on with both legs, side saddle looks unbalanced and precarious. and another horsey question; with widespread AI why not ship the sperm in a container to MN rather than the whole horse to ID. Or aren't horses done "that way"? I thought with very high level race horses it had to be live cover but didn't know it was that way for all. I don't know beans about horse breeding so I hope this isn't insulting to your horses!

I took 2 days off this week, yesterday because the weather was too crummy for a ski or snowshoe so we did garden work instead. not exactly loafing but not cardio either. Monday I did trradmill 30, and GS chest and triceps. today I did 30 treadmill 30 elliptical and core 2. I'm getting much better at the pikes on the stability ball. all of a sudden I seem to have gotten it. levitation holds still elude me.

[engineer]

Yes - there are folks who still do side-saddle - mostly for historical reasons. But it was comfortable, musch more so than I had imagined just being on the saddle and not on a horse. As for why, well as you can imagine with a draft horse it's kind of like a little kid riding on a fat pony. I can't really get my legs around to get a good grip so why not side saddle. And you have the grips of the pommels (?) to clench the legs on to.

As for AI we were going to try it but the owner of the sire didn't like the collection folks and so won't collect other wise that would be much simpler. Only thourobreds require live cover but it's that dang collection thing:rolleyes:

[Valerie226]

Tee hee...I'm in WAY over my head here. I can't imagine how the sperm is "collected" or how it's "introduced". Knowing how big draft horses are, I'm sure it's a challenge on both ends.
Not to go off on a tangent, but I've had bad luck around horses. Been dumped hard twice, once when a saddle came off and once when DH decided to reel in a hose while I was riding the nieghbor's pony. guess it must have looked like a snake because they said it looked like rodeo riding for a couple minutes. I ended up on my butt. been kicked in the leg twice, been bitten once, and so on. my closest exposure was giving my neighbor's horses some vaccinations which actually seemed risky but turned out OK. so I do like horses but the small exposure I've had usually results in insult or injury. and I'm short with short legs so I understand "trying to get your legs around the gutt" issue. but side saddle still looks terribly unbalanced to me.

anyway, we did a serious garden day on saturday, then a hike ( 5 hours)sunday that was just so- so but was exercise. monday I did 30 treadmill, 20 elliptical and coremax 2. did not get to yoga this morning but will do maybe KPC and then an upper body workout.