After missing my sleep goal last Wednesday, I have been able to hit a minimum of 7 hours of sleep for the past 5 days. 

Though I slept lightly last night, I was happy to have hit my sleep goal since it was my first night of chemo.  

When I woke up in the middle of the night I wasn’t dizzy and didn’t have any issues but I was fatigued when I started getting ready this morning. 

Even when everything is clicking on-time during chemo, my body still feels as though it’s running slower. It’s a weird feeling to explain and experience. 

For the first time this year (yes, really), we had measurable rain overnight and into this morning. In addition to having to walk Sasha in the rain, the carpet in front of our windows and slider were wet from the rain coming in sideways overnight. 

To add to the Monday morning fun, what is usually a 45 minute commute ended up taking me 1.5 hours. Though, it’s hard to complain about that since one of my colleagues had a 3 hour commute in this morning, thanks to people not understanding how to drive in the rain. 

Due to a few meetings getting shuffled around, I only had two meetings this morning and then had the rest of the day to work through my to-do list. That will flip around tomorrow when it’s all meetings and there will be little to no time to get work done. 

One of the things I had to do was work with UCSF on ensuring that my next two rounds of blood work and chemo didn’t fall on any of the holidays including both mine and Laura’s birthdays. Luckily, we were able to get that all taken care of. 

Tonight’s workout was focused on functional cardio and core work while also wanting to improve my grip strength and endurance: 

Functional Cardio

• Farmer's Walk (50 lb kettlebells) - 2 minutes 
• 30” Box Jumps - 10
• 1 minute rest
• x 5 rounds

Core

• Overhead Weighted Decline Sit-Ups (25 lb plate) - 3 x 15 reps
• Weighted Knee Ups (10 lb dumbbell) - 2 x 15 reps, 1 x 7 reps
• Standing Oblique Crunches - 3 x 15 reps (50 lb kettlebell)

Finisher

• Kettlebell Swings - 25 reps (39 lbs/18 kg)

By the second round of farmer’s walks my forearms were on fire and I could barely hold on to the kettlebells. I continued to push through the other three rounds but I had to take different routes around the gym just to keep my mind focused on something else. 

I tried to tackle the box jumps as fast as possible with no rest or time to reset while maintaining strict form. I only almost clipped my toes a couple of times. My speed was much faster than I anticipated. 

The overhead weighted decline sit-ups put additional stress on my shoulders, forearms and abs as I kept the plate held straight out during the entire set with a short pause at the bottom of the exercise for each rep. 

When I was finished, though my forearms and shoulders were shot, I was standing near the kettlebell area and so figured I’d grab a 18 kg (39 lbs) kettlebell and bang out swings until my arms gave out. That was at the 25th rep. 

Tonight I put together a list of all of the events I’m already either registered for or planning on participating in next year. It’s going to be a fun 2016 filled with pushing myself to new limits. 

All in all, today was a great day with the only downside being the fatigue that I felt when I woke up and during the first few hours of being at work. However, that is fairly typical of my chemo weeks so I’m not complaining about it.