The basement was ready just in time for the Super Bowl, a year long goal! It is not done but at least we can finally use it. We invited our parents and a friend over to watch the game. In case it was boring I set up a pool to bet on who would score first, who would win, etc, but the game did not disappoint. An onside kick after the half? Really? What a game! For a lot of reasons I should have rooted for the Colts but I cheered for the Saints. In over 40 years they have never even BEEN to a Super Bowl. Drew Brees is a good quarterback who deserved a ring and Manning already had one. And finally, New Orleans has seen a lot of suffering and deserved a reason to celebrate. Great game to both sides and congratulations to the Saints.

Louie Psihoyos, photographer and now filmmaker, set out to demonstrate how the actions of a few people in a small place can have a devastating impact on people all over the world if the world is not aware.

http://blog.changemyselfchangetheworld.com/?page_id=1153

There are other reasons why I want to learn Spanish. For one thing, right after I married a Ramirez I started getting mail in Spanish. I might be missing out on some great credit card opportunities. Also, speaking of finishing things I start, I never graduated from college. A third semester of a foreign language is one of the three requirements I had left before I dropped out of college to go work in Europe (a story for another day). Since it has been so long I would have to start over. Or, I can learn on my own and test out of the requirement. So that’s the plan. My most motivating reason, though, is that I want to go back to Honduras to meet the rest of Alex’s family. This time I want to be able to talk with them directly. Going through a translator just didn’t cut it.

Obviously, studying Spanish in school was one of the main reasons I chose it for the “learn a foreign language” goal. I am hoping some of it will come back to me. If it had occurred to me back then how useful it would be to speak Spanish in Colorado I might have actually studied. I even went to a high school with a decent sized Hispanic population but to be totally honest, I never thought about it much at the time. The only day I remember really being aware of it was when a speaker came to our school to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. But instead of talking about the great victory of the Mexican army over the French, he talked very passionately about Latin America rising up to bring down the white man. That was a very uncomfortable school assembly. Anyway, now that I am older and wiser I definitely see the value of learning Spanish so that is what I am going to do.

Major accomplishment working out this morning. Double unders are a frequent part of our warm up at CrossFit. We usually do sets that total up to 50. This morning double unders were the actual workout. The goal was to do as many as possible in 15 minutes. I did my first 50 in a row. I have never been able to get all 50 in a row before today. In the first minute and a half I had already done over 100 but my pace deteriorated quickly. Not a bad though. In 15 minutes I did 575 double unders. I bet if I paced myself at 20 every 30 seconds I could get over 600. I look forward to the challenge. But I bet we won’t see that workout again for awhile.

Next goal on the list is to learn a foreign language. Somehow I managed to take almost 3 years of Spanish and get all As and Bs without learning to speak any Spanish. Funny, but also a missed opportunity. In high school we had a soft-spoken red-headed Irish woman as our Spanish teacher. One day someone pulled me out of class early for a tennis match at Ponderosa High School an hour away. After that I made Mrs. (anyone remember her name?) believe that I had to leave class early every Tuesday and Thursday for tennis matches – even when we were playing at home. It is still a little funny but I feel bad. I am sure she was a really nice lady but this was before I realized teachers were actual people.

I really dislike running on a treadmill. Outside, 25 minutes goes by pretty fast. On a treadmill every minute feels like an hour. But what I found out in January is that if I don’t run first thing in the morning before the day gets hectic, it doesn’t happen. I only ran 5 times last month. That is not nearly enough to help me reach my goal. So late last night we finally set up our new treadmill down in the basement. No longer have an excuse (like the weather) not to get my running in.

By the way, I left out a statistic yesterday. Hours of volleyball in January: 42

Today I want to thank everybody for the overwhelming support. Your words of encouragement have meant a lot to me. I cannot believe January has already passed! I definitely need to kick it up a notch in February with my fitness goals:

Pull-ups (dead hang)
Starting: 2
Current: 3 
Best ever: 8
Goal: 10

Push-ups (military)
Starting: 8
Current: 13
Best ever: 15
Goal: 25

Run 5k (at altitude)*
Starting: 8:50/mile
Current: 8:30/mile
Best ever: 7:46/mile
Goal: 7:30/mile 

January Totals
# of pull-ups: 275 ** 
# of push-ups: 475 ***
# of sit-ups: 830
# of miles run: 18
# of total lbs lifted at CrossFit: 10500

This blog had 1299 visitors in January. Thank you guys!

WEEKLY WEIGH-IN:
Last week: 148
This week: 147
Goal: 137

* I say ‘at altitude’ since I ran 7:36/m by the beach in CA – way less than my time here.
** The goal is dead hang but workouts include assisted, negative, and kipping pull-ups.
*** I did girl push-ups the first two weeks.