So the name of this website is Ride Eat Repeat....which is pretty much how I live my life. The only thing a wee bit different right now in this 'pre-motorcycle' season is that I am riding a pedal bike. Her name is Pedals and I got her for my birthday last year. I've tweaked her, bought her a fancy rhinestone bell, gave her some saddle bags and a fancy odometer. She's tricked right out and I love her. In November when I got diagnosed with my heart problems, she got garaged and she hasn't been out much since then. The weather has been crap and exercising outside in the cold is too hard on my heart now so she's been forced into hibernation. On May 15, I will be riding her 40km (24 miles) to raise money for a local hospital. In order to do this, I have to focus a little more dilegently on my cardio conditioning and overall fitness. And for that reason, I have developed April Fitness Challenge. Now normally I go to the gym two mornings a week (if I can get out of bed...usually it's more like 1 morning) and once during the week on the way home from work. Sometimes I drag myself to a morning spinning class on the weekend but more often than not, I don't. I also should mention that when I go to the gym in the morning, I call it 4:30am but that's actually when I get out of bed (hard, yes!). When I actually GET to the gym is more like 5am and then change and find the treadmill and I really only get about 35 or 40 minutes of exercise in. Not really good enough, nope. April Fitness Challenge is going to change all that. I've decided that I want and need something more and the only way to get that is to work for it. I've also remembered that it never gets easier. It's not like a week or a month from now I'm going to suddenly WANT to get up at 4am and go to work out and that it's going to feel like kittens licking the flab off. Nope, it's always going to be hard so I might as well get started. The schedule below is my month long plan to improve my fitness and drop some pounds and train for my ride. It will also help me to train for my upcoming 10km run in June. I am temporarily hijacking this blog to chronicle my training for Wheel to Heal ride and to try to help myself stay on track with my AFC schedule. There are a couple of caveats built into this plan, the days with a red square around the date are optional bale days due to female logistical issues, I may need none of them but more than likely I will need at least one. And I have one built in No Way Day that I can pull out ONCE during the month for a free pass for no reason at all. Other than that, it's full go! 
Things we Like
Followers
It's been exactly 6 months today that I've ridden my bike. My sweet baby is under cover in the garage, patiently awaiting warmer weather. I'm wishing I was under cover and am trying not to have a complete breakdown on a daily basis.
Let's look at what's been going on in the last 6 months.
October 2010 ~ Ray and I finally made the decision that I would give up my apartment and move into the house. While excellent and happy news, it was a tonne of work and definitely an adjustment that would have been easier to make had everything else not gone for a shit!
October 15, 2010 ~ our aging boxer, Brandy, had a series of seizures and we thought we were going to lose her. She rallied after a couple of days at the vet and returned home. I now medicate her daily before I go to work.
October 30, 2010 ~ after several weeks of increasing back pain, Ray got a doctor's note and stopped working. We thought that it would be a couple weeks of a bit of rest and he would be good as new. Almost 5 full months later, things have gone from bad to better to terrible to worse. In the last week, Ray had a severe backslide and was unable to walk, stand or sit. He's pretty much been laid out on our living room floor for 5 days in excruciating pain. We're trying an experimental treatment now that has an 86% full recovery rate. It's a month long and cost us $6000 but it will be worth every penny if we can just get our lives back.
November 7, 2010 ~ I wound up in the emergency room of our local hospital after a weird breathing/heart racing/passing out incident after a pedal bike ride outside. My doctor did some tests and found the marker which indicated heart attack and sent me to the ER. An overnight stay and a plethora of tests later, I was diagnosed with Atrial Tachycardia. Ultimately that means lifelong medication if I don't qualify for the surgery to repair. The entire month of November saw me off work and trying to adjust to the new medication and the horrible side effects as well as trying to fight off a brutal throat infection, no doubt picked up during my stay at the hospital.
December 2010 ~ I won't get into the details here but the meshing of Ray's kids and ex family with myself and my family during the holidays is ridiculous. It has since been determined via request from Ray's daughter, that I will not be present on Christmas Day, it is not my 'place'. Obviously Ray is put in between a rock and hard place and in this instance, I lose. She will get what she wants and Ray and I will never be able to spend Christmas morning/dinner together. This one I can't dwell on though because it really could destroy me emotionally.
The only things that we've had to deal with this year as far as incidents is the dog's health. She's been in and out of the vet a lot. She's started peeing and randomly shitting in the house and right now I'm the one who has to clean it up. With everything else going on, the dog is my absolute LAST priority and this messing in the house thing makes me very resentful that she's even around and that her health and needs are competing with the little amount of time that I try to scratch out for myself.
Unfortunately the stress of trying to keep everything under control, particularly this week and heading forth into the next month, is giving my heart a run for its money; stress and A Tach are not good together and I'm figuring that out quickly. I've been carving out time to go to the gym every day because it's important for my sanity and my heart health. It means though that after gym I still have a couple of hours of work at home to do before I can sit down for the evening and then it's bed time. I know it will all be over (God willing) in a month or so but for right now it's completely consuming and hard and emotionally trying and I'm doing the bloody best I can. I'm trying very hard not to think of what will happen if this treatment doesn't work, I'm trying to stay completely positive for Ray. I'm doing literally everything for him and at the same time trying to make sure he doesn't feel any guilt or shame associated with that.
Anyway, that's my first post back after a lengthy absence and I hope that it's slightly more obvious why I've been missing.
Until next time!
S