Down the Rabbit Hole

Donan has started Kindergarten. In the first week of the academic year, the school he's enrolled in launched a fundraising campaign in support of the Parent-Teacher Organisation's activities for the school year. It's called "Raise Craze". In this fundraising campaign, each participant performs acts of kindness in honour of the generosity of the donor. I have not experienced this as a child because we normally exchanged donations with raffle tickets or goods (just like what the Girl Scouts do with their cookies). In Donan's case, we pledged to donate his gently used clothes and shoes to a local charity (we had chosen  The Society of St. Vincent de Paul  while planning how to participate).  View this post on Instagram Val and I sent out messages to friends and family to help raise funds. And everyone we asked generously pitched in. In total, Donan's contribution to the organisation was $455!  I thank everyone who showed up for Donan. It...

 You don't quit when it's hard. You quit when it's over. I didn't complete the half-marathon distance in my first Orangetheory Marathon Month attempt , logging only 10.02 miles on the treadmill. I told myself I would refrain from joining these challenges because being so close and yet so far was such a let-down.  The following month, however, I decided to join the DriTri sprint challenge because I couldn't shake off the feeling that I could actually finish this. If the half-marathon is 13.1 miles spread over a month, the DriTri sprint is composed of a 1,000-metre row, 130 reps of bodyweight exercises, and a 1.55-mile treadmill run to be finished within one hour. Crazy for a non-finisher, right? Nevertheless, I took on this challenge. While on the rower, I thought that reaching the distance was easy enough because I started at a good pace. Then fatigue kicked in, about halfway through the rowing portion. I struggled through the rest of the distance as I couldn't...

I've been attending Orangetheory classes every weekend since January. Each class I attend includes a treadmill exercise. In the several months that I have been attending classes, I progressed from power-walking (fastest pace at 3.5 mph) to jogging (fastest pace at 5.0 mph) I decided to join the Marathon Month challenge and run/jog the half-marathon. If I run/jog at least 1.7 miles per class, I'd be able to complete the half-marathon distance. And so I kept signing up for the 2G classes or the Tread 50 classes (i.e., 50-minute treadmill-only workouts).  After the challenge ended, I found out that I had only reached a little over 10 miles. I did not finish the half-marathon. My first reaction was to avoid joining future Orangetheory challenges. As I wallowed in disappointment, I justified not participating by focusing on my primary objective for signing up for classes: improving my overall cardiac health by losing weight, burning fat, and building muscle. I was very disappointe...