I am Hulkifer

When I was 27 something really cool happened to me, I woke up one morning and was really happy with who I was. Physically and mentally. It was something that I knew would happen eventually, and I was always really jealous of people who I perceived to be that way, but at times it felt like I would never get there. Anyone who suffers with insecurity will understand this. It's hard being self conscious all the time, and worried about whether or not people will like you. So it was a breath of fresh air to wake up and be okay with who I am, and be okay if people didn't like me. I made a post on social media that day saying that I was better than I ever had been, and I couldn't wait to meet the 45 year old me. I realized that as I have been getting older, I have been getting better; better athletically, better mentally, better in my personal life and professional life. And if the trend continued, 45 is going to be amazing!

Now where does the title of this blog fit into all of that? Fast forward a couple years, and I have ran a half marathon, a full marathon, completed a triathlon (it was short, Olympic distance), won my first Grand Champion trophy, and competed in the Everest challenge, where you climb the equivalent of the height of Mt. Everest (29,029 feet). And it was climbing that earned me that nickname that would end of being more descriptive of me than any nickname ever.

I was climbing regularly with my friend Liz, who had been climbing a lot longer than me, and was definitely more skilled than me at climbing. Where she would use finesse and technique to get past a hard move, we called her Spider Liz it was like watching a spider crawl up a wall, I tended to just brute strength it, or as we came to call it, hulking my way up the wall. And one day, I went to do a difficult move, and I did try to use good technique. I placed my foot the way I was supposed to and sifted my body weight and...nope. I tried several times all to no avail, so what did I do? I hulk-ed my way through it, there might have been jumping and sound effects to do it, and then some celebratory-ness sounds after the move, lol. And from below me, I hear, "All right Hulkifer"in a tone that is amused, both at me and my exasperating utter lack of technique. I made us both shirts after that, that look like homemade sports jerseys (cause they were) with our ages at the time, I was 29, as the number and our nicknames above them.

Fast forward a couple more years, and I decide to start weight lifting as a way to improve myself, appearance wise and athletically. I wanted to be stronger. I'm fairly independent anyways and too competitive for my own good, and I damn sure don't want help carrying things. So I picked a program called Shortcut to Size to follow because my knowledge where weight lifting was concerned was minimal at best, and up to this point ineffective. Twelve weeks later, I have finished the program, and I'm not bigger, but I am a hell of a lot stronger, stronger than I realized. I start a different program and I keep getting stronger, my average mile run time dropped by a full minute and a half because my legs are that much stronger.

But then one day, my trunk won't open, I drove a Prius, and it had some design flaws. I unlocked the trunk 4 times and tried to open it before I got mad. I decided that trunk was gong to open, I grabbed the handle with the intent of ripping it open...I ripped the handle and the entire handle section off the back of my car. My husband was like, "Jeez Hulkifer, did you have to break your car"? And then I broke the bed, and a door, and a desk, I broke the handle off of a hotel door (that was a good story), and then I really did break my car. Like headlights in the dash break. I basically have proceed to Hulkifer things in my life. And I always go all in, I am 0 or 100, there is no in between.

Currently I have a perforated eardrum, and like all things in my life, I Hulkifer-ed it spectacularly. I went from getting up in the morning and my ear hurting a little to a severe enough ear infection that by 7pm that night I am on my way to urgent care in more pain than I have ever been in in my life (which I feel like is saying something), this is my first ear infection ever too by the way. A couple hours later I am home on the couch, I've taken my prescription and my ear starts leaking. I had enough pressure build up, that my eardrum ruptured to relive it. Then came the ringing, and the complete loss of hearing on that side, and the discovery that when I blow my nose, my ear whistles, loudly, louder than I can whistle out of my mouth without using my fingers.

Today is day 10, nobody has died...yet. But I understand now how people who can hear the earth hum go crazy. Ten solid days of my ear ringing, and I mean it is not a quiet ring, it is competing with all of the other sounds in my life, trying to drown them out. Considering my penchant for hulking out and breaking things in my life on accident, I'm going to go ahead and say you don't want to make me angry. :)

#juststrong #trainhard #karatelife #karate #hulkifer #juststrongambassador