Sunday, August 29, 2010

Day 90 - Can I celebrate yet?

Ok, ok, maybe I did a little pre-post PCP celebrating last night. 2 glasses of red wine, 1 shot of Patron, 2 beers, LOTS of dancing and 4 hours of sleep later, I got up, drank my coffee and did my final workout. Well, not final for life, but final official workout. I was a little hungover, but after getting the blood flowing, I feel not great but good. I don't feel guilty about my early celebration. 'Twas a relief to let go of control for just a little while. 90 days is a long time to exert so much discipline over one's self, falling into some chaos was exactly what my soul needed. Reminds me of this concept:



Panarchy. The idea was originally used to describe ecosystems and their multiple stable states. A system utilizes its resources and builds up its potential energy and connectedness, then some event occurs that causes the system to release energy and decline in its potential. The system then undergoes a sort of reorganization and either returns to its original stable state or, depending on the intensity of the chaos event, the system may reorganize into a new, different stable state. The concept has been applied to all sorts of systems at this point, not just ecosystems. I think it aptly describes what we all just went through....we reached some point in our lives where we brought PCP in to break us down, reorganize us and put us into a new stable state. Naturally, there will be smaller cycles within the big one and one small event won't necessarily cause us to lose the new PCP state. Point is, I've (we've) spent 3 months reorganizing, exploiting our physical and mental resources to build up into a highly connected person with loads of potential energy...naturally the body and mind are calling for a little release at this point as we reintegrate back into non-training mode and apply PCP to normal, everyday life.

And, even though I allowed myself to indulge in the booze, I still kept the food portion of the diet. While everyone was chowing down on late night pizza, I ate an apple banana and a hard-boiled egg. Honestly, it was pretty good. I wasn't craving the pizza, but it was late and I wanted food. Planning ahead and bringing my snack with me was genius!

I enjoyed my last workout. The most improvement seems to be in my back, shoulders and abs. Oh, and jump rope! Wow! I gotta be honest. We've been told to take a few days off, but I really just don't see how I'm going to take the jump rope out of my morning routine. It's ingrained now. Get up, brew & drink a cup of coffee, eat a piece of raisin toast, jump. Then, go about my day. No problem taking some time from the strength training, but the jump rope? Really? I don't know.

Well, final post will come in a few days. I'm not even close to knowing what I want to write in it, so I'll take a few days of reflection and then come back with my parting thoughts and pictures. Okay, off to the springs for some more celebration (the sober, sparkling water type)!

10 comments:

  1. Celebrate!! Your muscles are insane!!

    Looking forward to your final post!

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  2. This is an IMPORTANT image for people. You've got to leverage the natural cycles of the body and mind. People who try to keep the needle in the red all the time never succeed.

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  3. Yeah, Jenny! Glad you enjoyed your pre-post-PCP celebration. Thanks for the image and the explanation - makes total sense.

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  4. Oh dear. Don't want to say goodbye yet!

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  5. Celebrating is important, don't feel guilty! The few days of rest is also important, Patrick forbade me from jumping! If anything it just reinforced how much I now need and enjoy it. Can't wait for your last post. BTW, haven't been checking back that regularly recently, have you done a pull-up yet?

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  6. Congrats on making it through! And appreciate the rest--as you've stated, it's a very natural part of the cycle, and no reason for guilt. Even your body needs a vacation every now and then.

    Looking forward to your final official post!

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  7. Woohoo! you did a pull-up !!

    Apply PCP to normal, everyday life, that's exactly I want.

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  8. Jenny, first of all congratulations on the pull-up and everything that led up to that pull-up. Second, that paragraph about panarchy and pcp is amazing. It totally sums everything up so so well. I'm printing it out and putting it up so I can see it every day to remind myself that I'm not striving towards the firefighting test (well I am) but am instead striving towards something much bigger, a new stable normal.

    Congratulations. You've made amazing progress.

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