Start 100 Pushup challenge
| May 7, 2009 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
I did my max test of pushups to kick off the 100 pushup challenge. I managed a measly 20. Which isn’t too bad considering I haven’t been doing them regularly. I think the most I have ever been able to do in the past was 35-40. I didn’t squeak every pushup out I could – I did them until I couldn’t hold good form and I was “pushing” with my legs. Supposedly I’ll be able to do 100 in six weeks. I’m…..skeptical.
In other news….I have some sort of bad allergic reaction on my face. I’m allergic to EVERYTHING. At first I thought that it might be a reaction to the hypoallergenic face wipes I have started using after my rides and runs. My mother favors this theory. After watching it get worse and worse and worse….over the course of the last 5 days, I’m now favoring the poison oak theory. Oroville (where I road Saturday), does have poison oak, but I don’t remember any during that wet rainy ride. I stayed mostly on the road during the ride, which is wide and easy to avoid vegetation. I also wore (as always) long sleeves, gloves etc. So in summary I’m not sure where I would have picked it up.
WHATEVER it is, it doesn’t really matter because the facts are that my face burns/itches/hurts enough that I can’t focus and I had to go home sick yesterday so that I could take copious amount of benedryl and sleep on the couch last afternoon. Yes, I have FINALLY made a doctor’s appointment this morning. In which they are probably going to try and give me cortisone, to which I will say “I react to that” and they will say “no one reacts to cortisone”. *sigh*
I felt horrible last night (see preceding paragraphs…) so I went to the stable ONLY because I didn’t go the day before, and I thought that giving Farley a bath would be fun (cold water on my face is VERY soothing – don’t know how clean Farley would have actually gotten). Of course once I was at the stable, why not go riding? For the first time since I’ve started arena work, there were LOTS of other horses in the arena (4-H lesson). Farley did very good and only got antsy when she was on the rail walking and other horses would come up behind her, loping. Good girl! She gave me the right canter lead without too much trouble. I focused on NOT pulling back on the reins. If she got going too fast I would ask with my seat, and then we would circle off the rail. It worked quite well.
Part of me feels bad for blowing off my lesson this weekend to go to the Poker ride with my Dad, but part of me feels that I’m making so much progress on my own, it’s OK to wait to take a lesson for a while. I also think I might get a lot out of auditing a lesson from the ground.
Good luck with the pushups! I can’t do them anymore – I had wrist surgery last summer and pushups make my wrists hurt in a bad way. I should really update my exercise blog; I’ve made a ton of progress.
The face wipes are a good guess about your itchy face. My other guess would be poison oak smoke, possibly? You said it was wet, so someone might have burned brush that had poison oak in it. That’d make your exposed skin react, which was only your face from what you describe.
Good luck. I’m horribly allergic to poison ivy so I feel your pain.
Ugh pushups!I used to be able to snap out 60 or so at a time with no problem. Of course that was about 20 years ago when I was in the Army. These days…I don’t want to know…:-)
Good luck!
Don’t hate me…I pull up poison Ivy / Oak with my bare hands. But this will make you feel better. I’m allergic to cosmetics, now how HORRIBLE IS THAT?
Hope you feel better soon. ~E.G.
I’ve never actually reacted to makeup, but why tempt fate? I don’t use ANYTHING on my face – no soap, lotions, creams, cosmetics etc. A couple of times a year I do wear make up and my skin cooperates, at least for that night. LOL. In grade school my mom used to send me with my own soap because I’d break out on my hands with the school soap.
The good news is that it seems to be better today – less itchy/painful and less red. I think I’ve turned the corner. FYI the Doctor said that Zyrtec is better than benedryl for hives. I’m still not sure what it was. The doc is skeptical about poison oak AND the wipes. I had used them for 2 weeks prior and she said it would be unlikely I would react after time. BUT with the soap it takes time to react…..so I don’t know if I agree with the doctor.
I’m skeptical about the doc’s opinion too – I’ve had things like laundry detergent that took time to cause a reaction on me. (Did that make sense?)
The good thing about Benadryl is that it works rapidly. I take generic otc Claritin daily for my cat/dog/hay allergies, but it doesn’t start to work immediately like Benadryl. I haven’t tried Zyrtec – as long as the super cheap Claritin keeps working I’m sticking with that.
I was much more sensitive as a child. Same as you – I’d break out from using the wrong soap. My mom is still more sensitive than I am, and hopefully I won’t get worse over time.
Yeah – I’ve broken out to laundry detergent too. She said that if I can use the wipes on my hands for 2 weeks without a reaction, they should be OK. We’ll see. I don’t even know if I want to take that chance. This hive reaction was AWFUL.
The Doc said zyrtec is better for hives than claritin. I took claritin for a long time for allergies too! I agree with you that I think bendryl works faster than claritin. The Zyrtec was NOT cheap, but I was able to find a generec. Still, is come to almost $20 for 30 pills! Yikes!
BTW – my seasonal allergies are NO where near as bad as they were as a kid. I haven’t been on a daily allergy med (like claritin) for ~5 years now. It might be because I’ve moved to a new area and I’m not allergic to anything here (yet), but I’m pleasantly surprised.
Hahaa Melinda…I still think it’s hilarious about the cortisone. “No one reacts to cortisone”
Nice.
And yes, I am working on my blog. I have been a bad girl…