Life of the Lintee Bean

It’s been over three weeks since the push-up duel ended.  Did the push-ups abruptly end?  Not for me.  Two reasons:

1. Like Pavlov’s dog, I’m now conditioned to do push-ups.  “Never Gonna Stop” by Rob Zombie comes up on my music playlist and I feel like throwing myself on to the floor to begin push-ups.
2. The 20,013 in 2013 challenge is ongoing – and I haven’t give up on the idea of completing it.

I have 3,069 push-ups to date this year.  Well, actually 3,081 but the first 12 didn’t count as they were before I officially “signed up” for the 20,013 in 2013 challenge.

Some people have been incredibly supportive of me in my push-up quest.  “Thunder John” even wrote a rather nice post about me on his blog!  (… and yes, I AM single!)

Some people have not been particularly keen on the idea of me doing all these push-ups.  For example, my chiropractor and my personal trainer.  For some reason, they do not seem to understand that… IT’S A CHALLENGE!  That’s like a DARE!  I HAVE to do it!  I was raised with the “don’t quit” attitude… the “you don’t fail unless you fail to try” mentality.  That may sound good, even admirable… until you really get that “OR DIE TRYING” part of the equation.  I don’t think I’m particularly noble – what I am is incredibly pig-headed and stubborn.

So, for exampe, I met with my trainer last week.  I told him we needed to baby some muscle located over my right shoulder blade.  My trainer is smart and awesome and was asking questions to evaluate my injury.  Like “when does it hurt?”  Oh… it hurts like when I did push-ups the night before.  Ron asked how many I’d done… oh, 97.  Ron’s response was “NINETY-SEVEN?  WHY???”  Because!  Challenge!  20,013 in a year.. that’s 55 a day!  If I’m going to do push-ups every other day that’s like 110 every other day!

Ron asked when else it hurt, besides when I did push-ups.  Oh, when I put pants on.  He had me go through some various range of motion type things, and decided it was not a rotator cuff.  (I guess that’s bad if it’s a rotator cuff… I don’t know, Ron was explaining it and I got distracted by another guy at the gym wearing a t-shirt that had the “pi” symbol on it.  I have a short attention span, and rotator cuffs seem boring.)

Anyway, Ron’s solution to my “injury” was to not to so many push-ups.  That’s just crazy talk.  However, we only did six that night, because he suggested we do “uneven” push-ups with a medicine ball under one hand… and I did five on one side – one on the other side and determined that hurt really really bad.

The next night, though, I was back at it.  I did 113 push-ups, pushing through the pain.  This may have been a bad decision.  My muscle graduated from “hurts to put pants on” to “hurts to breathe…. at all… ever”.

To top it off, it snowed Thursday night.  I had to shovel my own walk – and I helped my neighbor with hers.  The muscle was really screaming after that.  Curses upon nature and nature’s stupid snow.

So, I haven’t done any push-ups since Wednesday.  My “cushion” in the challenge is rapidly deteriorating.  I’m hoping I’ll heal and be back to it soon.  Climbing into a box of pita crackers and vat of hummus may help.