He he ... not much air up here ...

Okay, the air up here doesn't seem that thin until you try to DO anything. It's comical, but a couple of us often walk to the PRT together and we feel slightly winded when we get there. Really ?!?

Molly has been doing a lot of training recently, ramping up for her 10K runs. If you're reading this, you probably read her posts or heard otherwise, but if you didn't then realize that I'm PROUD AS HELL OF HER! She's beaten her goals for every race until this very last one where I finally convinced her to set a very competitive one (60 minute 10K run). She just barely missed it which means by the time she runs another one, I think she'll be smoking the hour mark. Too cool!

Well, in addition to providing moral support, I'm also trying to keep up in the miles. I've been keeping up somewhat, and my 5K time has dropped incredibly: 22:30! Until Paktika, that is. The first day (when I woke up at 2:30am and couldn't sleep), I decided to go run. And run I did, for 1 mile. And then I stopped.

The next day, I slept in all the way until 3am. Awesome. So I tried running again, and this time made it 1.5 before crashing. Ouch.

Well, long-story-short, three days ago I finally was able to run a 5K, albeit in just under 28 minutes. I'm not upset, honestly, because I know it takes time to adjust, but it'll be nice when I can get my time back to where it was a few weeks ago.

Back to my fitness goals. I haven't been able to participate in any crossfit routine for a couple of months now due to my shoulder. Well, after Cherryl gave me that sports massage before I left and found knots I didn't know I had (thanks, Cherryl!), I'm finally able to move my arm all the way around with no pain. So, it's time to get back going again. Very slowly, though.

I think I injured it by jerking on a lot of the barbell exercises. So, I'll mitigate that by lowering the weight (initially), moving slowly until full tension is achieved, and watching for the tell-tale signs. It's not like I'll be able to do too much damage though, I'm still out of breath way too early ;-)

So far, these have been my workouts:

October 8: 5 sets of 10@: pull-ups, push-ups, knees-to-elbows, and 24" box-jumps; followed up with 8 tabata sprints at 8% incline. OUCH.

October 9: 5K run, 22:26 (in Bagram).

October 10: 1mi run, 9-ish pace.

October 11: 1.5mi run, 9-ish pace.

October 13: 5K run, 27+45.

October 15: Annie from 40 (40,30,20,10 of double-jumps and situps); 3 sets of 10@: pull-ups, sliding push-ups, GHD back extensions; 25,20,15,10,5 of shoulder presses with 10# interspaced with 10x 25# lunges. Oh yeah, this is gonna hurt.

It's now the 17th, and my shoulder hasn't hurt at all since then, which is absolutely awesome. Can't say the same for my gluts ... those lunges made things difficult these last two days ...

So, if you look back to my goals for starting crossfit so long ago, one of the hard parts was going to be keeping it up in Afghanistan. Well, I'm trying hard. My work schedule is not really accommodating, but I can make something work.

Of course, I haven't worked out in a couple of days so I feel like a slug. But my work schedule now will eventually ease up a little as I become more acquainted with my job here.