Maybe Some Hope?!

Well I'm signed up for Daisy Peel's online Functional Fitness I class!
It starts a week from today.  In the meanwhile I'm reading up to
learn more about physical fitness and in my case, perhaps why I keep
having troubles and injuries.  Here are some interesting things I've
learned:

A blog on Yoga Journal says that chronic hamstring injuries could be
the result of over-stretching.  Well that's a huge AH-HA for me!  I've
had chronic hamstring injuries all my life that date back to high
school when I was a cheerleader / dancer.  I have always
thought my biggest physical ability was my flexibility so have always
overstretched my hammies thinking I wanted to maintain it.  However,
apparently there are tiny muscles that keep getting micro tears when
they are overstretched.  Torn hamstrings take 3-6 months to heal
during which time you must be very gentle with them.  Crap, somehow
over the weekend I think the one I'm nursing got worse, I think when
bending over pulling weeds in the garden. Be careful eh...that's gonna
be a hard one for me.

Next....static stretching (holding a stretch for 30 seconds or longer
without a warm-up) is bad-bad-bad.  I've done that all my life, do'h!
I truly thought it was how you got yourself ready for physical
activity.  Not so little cricket!

Dynamic stretching is what you are supposed to do before a workout.  I
will say right here and now that rarely, if ever, do I see people
getting ready to run an agility course who precede their run with
dynamic stretching.  Yes, I see some jogging around, but don't think
I've ever seen people dynamically stretching.  Maybe this blog will do
some good then!  Runner's World is a cool site I've recently joined
which has tons of info about how to dynamically stretch, including
videos to show you how.

Again on Runner's World, I found an article on the 10 biggest causes
for runner's injuries.  Won't go into all 10 here but some I'm guilty
of are running through pain, not returning to full activity gradually
enough after an injury, and trying to lengthen my stride to go faster.
 The last one is like, wow!  I think I've even said here that I've
tried lengthening my stride in my last couple of agility trials.  What
did I come home with?  You got it, more injuries.  In my book Speed,
Agility & Quickness, there are lots of exercises to help with shorter,
faster, more agile strides.  I watched the DVD that came with the book
over the weekend and let's just say I'm WWWWAAAAYYYY not even close to
the abilities of the slick women athletes demonstrating.  Some of the
stuff I can do with good form though, just maybe not as many reps.
Maybe there is hope for this old girl after all :-).

Activity Guidelines from the CDC

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention at http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/adults.html

Adults ages 18-64 need at least:

	2 hours and 30 minutes (150 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (i.e., brisk walking) every weekand
	muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest,  shoulders, and arms).

	1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity (i.e., jogging or running) every week and
	muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest,  shoulders, and arms).

	An equivalent mix of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic activity and

Bazinga, Here We Go!

I've been thinking about this topic for a long time in relation to myself.  Here I am, 58 years young, a breast cancer survivor, wife, mother, grandmother, quality assurance professional in the nuclear power industry - and dog agility competitor.  I'm sure there's more to me such as family tax preparer, dog groomer, dish washer, weed puller, drinkin' buddy, etc., but the aforementioned roles are the main ones for the purposes of this blog.

The breast cancer treatments are all behind me now as of last week.  They included a lumpectomy (twice to get clean margins), port-o-cath surgery, knarly chemo (Taxol), radiation, not so knarly chemo (Herceptin), removal of port-o-cath.  Now all we have to do is monitor things.  Through it all I was told by my doctors to stay active and that would help minimize the effects of treatments.  While I was already fairly active anyway because of the dog agility thing and because I live on an acre in the country with a dog training facility that I rent out, I didn't give my physical fitness to keep up with it all a 2nd thought.  The breast cancer journey changed all that.

I continued to compete in the dog agility trials on doctor's orders (at least my interpretation of them since that's an activity I enjoy!).  It was quite honestly, a damned difficult and frustrating endeavor.  My body simply didn't have the "get up and go" it once had.  Competition is a funny thing.  When you don't win people will tell you what you should've done as if you were perfectly able to do it but just didn't due to some brain fart, lack of focus or bad strategy.  I know they mean to be helpful but it got more than a little bothersome to hear things like that when first of all, it was almost everything I could do to even get there, and second, only I knew how badly my stomach hurt, my eyes weren't focusing, my muscles wouldn't move, I wanted to get to the bathroom, and so on.

After I finished the chemo and radiation and moved on to the weekly Herceptin infusions for 9 months, I thought I received a severe injury.  X-rays didn't show one but my left hip felt like it had been run over by a Mack truck and my left leg and foot were constantly numb or with that pins & needles feeling.  I wondered if the Herceptin had anything to do with it by my oncologist disagreed.

Long story short, I got an MRI which showed some spinal stenosis which explained the leg issues but not the hip ones, went to physical therapy and began to work out at home.  It's now been almost 6 months since the left hip/leg/foot pain.  Things are better but not totally and...I seem to keep hurting something else.  In the last couple of dog agility competitions I worked extra hard to run with quickness and length to my strides.  I haven't been running like that in practice to "save" myself for competitions but wound up coming home with a notted up hamstring in one leg and a sore glute muscle and ham on the other side.  Sigh. 

I don't want to go on like this, working so hard not to be crippled but continuing to be.  Don't they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?  Well now, I happen to know I'm not crazy, my mother had me tested......BAZINGA!

So, this here blog is going to be about what I do to (hopefully) get physically fit again.  I hope it will document steps that can be taken by "mature" women who want to feel physically well after an illness as well as my home girls who would like to participate in dog agility or any other sport of their pleasure.  Here we go!