With how few people were in our office yesterday, I decided to work from home today thus meaning that I didn’t need to set an alarm. Sasha was nice enough to let me sleep until nearly 7:00a which is over an hour later than a normal workday.  

I went for my Day 21 blood work which is a simple CBC draw so it only takes a few minutes. 

While I’ll need to continue getting blood work done to check certain levels within my blood stream, it is exciting to know that I only have three more blood tests left as part of my chemo treatments. 

On my way back I picked up one of Laura’s birthday gifts and then headed to the gym. 

After starting at 16kg to work on mechanics and then moving up to 18kg for the last couple of workouts, I decided to jump up again to 20kg today. 

It doesn’t seem like a lot of additional weight but each kilogram is an increase of about two pounds. That small increase in weight adds up over 500 swings. 

I was able to get through all 500 swings but, similar to what happened when I tried 24kg, my lower back completely locked up on me. I pushed through it but need to figure out why it is happening. 

As several others that are taking the challenge are doing, I also wanted to work in an additional movement in between the rounds. 

After the first round I completed 10 goblet squats with the 20kg kettlebell but after the next four rounds I completed 10 bodyweight squats to save my arms a bit. Still, it was a total of 50 squats overall which is good. 

I had to rest longer and couldn’t go unbroken through the 50 reps of each round so it ended up taking me 44 minutes which is a 20 minute increase over my previous time on Sunday with the 18kg kettlebell and no additional exercises in between rounds. 

I may drop back down to 18kg tomorrow but keep in the goblet/bodyweight squats to see what my time is in comparison. 

As has been my life for the past week, I continued working on processing contracts, open purchase orders, adjusting my budgets and other finance and admin work. 

Mid-afternoon I headed in to my office to meet up with some of my friends since we were taking our interns out for a goodbye happy hour. Tomorrow it their last day with us, unfortunately. 

Tonight I have been relaxing and trying to rehab my lower back a bit. I had done a fair amount of foam rolling and mobility work when I first got home but still try to stretch it out even more before tomorrow’s workout.