Round 2.

It's funny. I went to bed last night, thinking about how well I was going to do on this morning's program. When I woke up, however, it was a different story.

Flashbacks to last Tuesday assailed me. I kept thinking about how sick I felt and how I quit early. How easy it would be just to turn over, kill the alarm clock and fall back to sleep.

That didn't happen. I still had this tiny bit of drive in the back of my head telling me to do it, despite the overwhelming comfort of the bed. And I have to thank Ashleigh for that extra push. If I were still single, I probably would have 'skipped' today and never come back.

I will admit, I was a bit afraid of this disc. It was always in the back of my mind that I failed so horribly on this disc the first time around. How I felt like I was going to throw up. How I knew I wasn't going to do as well as I would like. All these little things setting me up for failure.

I'm glad Ashleigh has a resistance band, because if I had to rely on a chin-up bar, I'd never feel like I accomplished anything. And the fact I bought some weights the other day makes it doubly better. (I started with 10lbs on each and, while they seem heavy at first, 10lbs is nothing. I need to do it again with maybe 15 or better.)

This routine consists of a LOT of push-ups of varying style. I read somewhere that the key to doing push-ups is to maintain form. If you can't keep your back straight or you can't go down then up, it's called a 'catastrophic failure'. Rather ominous and probably a bit of an overkill, but that's what I think of when I'm trying to maintain my form.

The first run through, I found myself catastrophicly failing more than the first time I ran through. As a result, I did many of the push-up exercises on my knees. It made me feel really lame, but the important thing was that I kept working the muscles. Maybe it wasn't AS intense, but it still burned. Gotta start somewhere, right? Need to build the foundation before you can build that brick house.

There is one push-up exercise that you simply cannot do on your knees. The elevated push-up. Feet on a chair, hands on the floor. In the first rotation of the disc, I managed three. (That seems really lame, but by the time it came around, I had done so many other push-ups, my chest was just on fire and I couldn't eek out any more.) The second time was the test. On the DVD, Tony is going on and on about how, if you need a break, pause and take it. So I did. I paused the disc and tried to not think about the sick feeling churning in my stomach. I also TOLD myself I was going to do, at the very least, one. (Lame, yes. Especially when the people on the DVD were doing 20.) This was my goal. If I did this, I was going to be king.

I unpaused the video, took my position, breathed... And did it! Holy crap, was I surprised! I immediately thought, "Let's do another!" and started to go down, but my chest was all, "LOL NO!" and I just kept going down until my face was on the carpet. Oh well. I still did it!

When we started the cool down, I started thinking that I might skip the Ab Ripper portion because I was still feeling sick and wanted a break. Then I thought if I _didn't_ do it, I was quitting. So, I sucked it up and pressed on. Sure, my performance was sloppy, but I think I did a little better than last time. Maybe I am getting in better shape. If only my shoulder wasn't in so much pain.

I finished up, went upstairs and collapsed on the floor, trying to distract myself from the feeling in my stomach. Ashleigh proved more than able to distract me, and I love her for it.

I took my shower and, while drying my hair, Ashleigh said, "Holy crap! Is that an ab?" Sure enough, while my arms were up on my head, I could see some (very slight) muscle definition on my sides. When I flexed my lower back, I could even see some muscles showing through.

That restored my confidence. I still didn't dare step on the scale, but seeing something tangible like that is a real mood elevator.

I dare say I think this is starting to work.