I've had a couple of really good days recently. For starters, my wife gave birth to our second child:
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| Don't stare too long, or you'll die from over exposure to cuteness! |
We named her Laurel, after Dinah Laurel Lance, a.k.a., the Black Canary. Why not Dinah? Because I don't want to hear I've Been Working on the Railroad in my head every time I say her name!
I wanted to name her after a superhero so she always has a reminder to be strong. I was going to go with Jean after Jean Grey, but my wife said that was a no-go.
I've been euphorically happy ever since she's been born. That's strange for me, as I'm not a happy person in general. The lack of depression, anxiety, and other PTSD-induced moods is unusual for me. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.
But this is a blog about my fitness and weight-loss journey, so let me give you an update on that as well.
In my last entry, I mentioned my shoulder injury, and how that was preventing me from exercising. I got tired of waiting for it to heal on its own, so I went to the doctor and they prescribed physical therapy. The therapist looked at my x-rays and determined that my injury was due to a chunk of muscle getting caught between my collar bone and a bone in my shoulder (ouch!) Any time I exerted myself, the bones would grind against the muscle, causing pain.
After five weeks of physical therapy, my shoulder is about 99% healed up. There's no pain, but just enough of a feeling to remind me that the injury is still there. I'm not doing any exercise outside of physical therapy until it's at 100%, lest I aggravate it.
But I hope that it'll be healed up fully by next week (knock on wood). After that, I start training for my half-triathlon.
Unlike when I was prepping for the half-marathon, I won't be doing too much training outside of the sixteen-week plan so I don't over-exert myself like I did last time. I'm going to do weight-training just twice a week to gain more strength to help my speed for the race. I'm struggling to make the time limit for the swim (you get 70 minutes to swim 1.2 miles; right now it takes me 80), but I'm hoping that changes as I train. You get eight hours to finish the race overall. My goal for the race is to do the swim under one hour, and the bicycling in three. That will leave me with four hours to do the run, which means I could practically walk it if I wanted to (and I'll probably be able to do little more than a slow jog at that point, anyway).
So it's been a good couple of days. I have a new daughter, and I'll hopefully be back in the gym soon enough (once again, knocking on wood). Life is good.
