Siezing A Sunday Opportunity

It's Sunday, and I have been in pain most of the weekend. Herniated disc spasms and pain, sciatica, toothache, insomnia, and fatigue. A thirty-year-old body is not as quick to rebound as a twenty-year-old one. Somehow I mustered the strength to keep to my training schedule. I ran 2.3 miles on incline and completed 2 miles on StairMaster Elliptical at 17 incline and resistance.  Doing exercises on an incline slows me down. Let's face it, with a body built like mine, with all it's injuries, I am much slower than a decade ago, when I had some excellent cross country races and played walk-on defense for Castleton University's women's lacrosse team. My husband had to helplessly watch a back spasm that happened on Friday night while I was on the couch. It left me with my back 'locking up' and in tears. He helped me stand an forced me to relax. Truth is, I am super terca, or stubborn, a trait my husband and I both share (love you!).

A sweaty hot mess

While I know that I need to take care of myself, and trust me the last 6 months I have been, I can't afford to not train (literally). Every opportunity to do high altitude training has to be seized. I don't want to fail the suggested medical check to go up the mountain (each climber should have a resting heart beat of under 100 beat per minute), and I don't want to be carried back down. Plus who really wants to use their medical excavation insurance? This climb is no joke, and it is not encouraged to "forge on" as poor altitude acclimatization can result in death. All the high end gear in the world won't save someone from succumbing to the mountain.

My two biggest concerns, lack of training and acclimatization. Every year over 1,000 people are evacuated from Kilimanjaro. Click the link to learn more about the perils. For today, I will relish the fact that my resting heart rate is 72 and I did my workout with 0 mgs of ibuprofen in my system. 
-a-