Anxiety Relief

I have a hard time falling asleep and like a child, I tend to wait until I can barely keep my eyes open. Then I grouse when the alarm sounds too soon in the pre-dawn dark. My mother suffered from an assortment of mental and emotional disorders but her most destructive was severe anxiety. I wonder if it's hereditary or environmental. She most clearly suffered from PTSD, having fled the bombing of Canton as a child in 1938. An untreated case of rheumatic fever led to destruction of her heart valves, and has recently been implicated in severe cases of OCD. She definitely had that. And agoraphobia. And probably a few other undiagnosed disorders. And while I don't think I'm horribly warped from my own dramatic childhood, I do suffer from anxiety. My only successful relief has been exercise, and lots of it.

I get anxious when I travel, so I tend to be a homebody. I worry about everything. Probably because I tend to over-think everything. That's why the gym is such a relief. It's the cure for my own head. I plug in my tunes and go about my routine. Most of the time it's not possible to worry when you're focusing on pushing heavy weight. Cardio is the only place where the mind can wander, unless you're moving so hard that the only thing you can focus on is the beat of your tunes.

Today I manage to get respectable mileage. I'm at the gym late enough so that most of the creepy guys are leaving when I come in, like PJ Pants, Shaggy and Frankenstein. Yaaay! I can still hear The Mayor behind me when I'm at the Smith and I shove my earbuds in tighter. Old guys must be deaf. And they fail to realize that people like me don't want to hear them. Don't care what they're chortling about. Other old guys stop by to swap stories. But women don't, especially the younger ones. Because like me, they're busy getting work done.

I skip the push ups and core today and settle for a few weight-lifting movements. I had thought I was just working on Wednesday, but it turns out that I'm also working on Thursday. And since I'd really like to whack the machine on Friday, and I just did body-weight stuff yesterday, well... it's kind of a no-brainer that today would be cardio and some Push and some Pull. I skip SLDLs because I haven't had enough sleep and I don't want to hurt myself. I'm tired and I adjust my expectations accordingly by cutting reps or sets altogether. It's still a badass workout. Well, at least I managed to do a few extra pull ups at the end.

Tuesday Workout
6.3 total cardio miles

30 min x-trainer
3.69 miles
140 calories
7.38  average speed
8:08 average pace

HGPU 31
Knee-Ins 50

Smith Inclined Bench
Bar x 15
15 x 50
12 x 70
10 x 80
25 x 60

Smith RG BB Row
21 x 80, 100, 120

DB Lat s/s Rev Incl Flyes
25 lbs x 12/15 x 3

30 min elliptical
Prgm 2
Miles:  2.61
Calories:  297

HGPU 36 Yaaay!