Look at this gorgeousness. Jeremy is trying to make it into the office at least once a week now that the days are longer and the weather is better. When he does this, it’s like he’s one my old nursing schedule – out of the house by 6 or 6:30, home between 8:00 to 10:00 pm depending on whether he has dinner in the city or not. As I’ve mentioned 10,000x before, Jeremy and I spend entirely too much time together and we are trying to figure out how to spend less time together. He had a nice day in DC, I had a semi-productive day in Rockville. Of course, my main companion during the day was Elka – you you better believe I spent the day just kissing the dog.
I will now (self-consciously and embarrassingly) reveal what happened to our house during the pandemic. Both Jeremy and I really got into working out a lot during the pandemic – Jeremy was biking upwards of 20 hours a week and added strength training to his routine. I eventually trained for a marathon after all the nursing stuff calmed down and primarily trained during the week on the treadmill and on the weekends either at the canal or in the woods. To support this insane level of attention to our physical fitness, we did end up buying: a treadmill, a bicycle “treadmill”, an enormous weight lifting rack, a bench (two benches actually after we outgrew the first bench), a bunch of weights, flooring and yoga supplies galore. Jeremy paid for a few (maybe only one) bike coaching sessions and got a strength coach. I kept working out with Paul coaching me on running and I did yoga through the Peloton program. Of course, now life is busier and we both are exercising much less. Jeremy’s work is much more involved and more satisfying to him. I’m working through my mid-life crisis of sorts, and though I dropped the nursing, I’m easily picking up more social engagements and outings with friends and, frankly, I just want to rest more. But we are still exercising and spending a lot of time in this room. Jeremy’s strength coach (Julie) is coaching me now and I’m happily moving through bench presses and front squats and various strength-y things and the running is more in the background. I actually talked to both Julie and Paul on the same day (not at the same time) and tried to figure out the seasonality of strength training and running because I feel like I can’t really train on both at the same time (I tried during the first quarter of 2023 because I didn’t really want to give up my running fitness), so now I’m pretty much doing strength training 3x a week and just adding a 20 min run/jog at the end of the strength session and the other 4 days I’m stretching or doing some yoga or gasp, nothing. hahaha. If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would dedicated prime real estate in my house to a squat rack, I would have said that you were absolutely insane. I’m an incredibly mediocre athlete (often times bringing up the rear in anything that tracks this sort of thing), but I’m so grateful that my body moves well and I’m able to work hard and see progress. Not everyone gets to have that.
Good for you! Functional fitness is important, especially as we get older. You have more intense caretaking duties than many other people, too. It’s nice to be in a nice room when you’re exercising, so I’m delighted that this room is lovely and has great views.