Day 18 – Coming Back To The Surface

(picture: Reuters)

I’m sure there aren’t many people around the world who don’t know about the culmination of the AMAZING rescue effort that’s been going on to bring the trapped Chilean miners back up to the surface.
I’ve been following events, primarily on the radio, since 5am this morning and it’s been truly wonderful to listen to.
One by one, hour by hour these men are making the half mile journey, from deep underground, back to the surface to be reunited with their friends and family.
It’s almost inconceiveable to think they’ve been down there since the mine collapsed on 5 August! That’s more than two months! TWO MONTHS!
What were you doing on 5 August? What have you spent the last two months doing?
The 33 miners have been sitting more than 600 meters underground, in the dark and in temperatures of around 30 degrees centigrade for all that time.
They have chronic dental issues which will require surgery, that’s happening tomorrow; their corneas may be damaged due to lack of light and one of the miners, thought to be the eldest one, has a mild case of pneumonia.
Apparently the miners already above ground and in a nearby hospital haven’t slept since their rescue, they are just too euphoric. For the first 17 days they didn’t know if they were going to be rescued or were destined to die in that mine.
The families on the surface have been incredible – a lot of them moved to the San Jose Mine and set up camp there, which became known as Camp Hope.
Camp Hope has a school there, a place for pre-schoolers and four denominations of the Christian faith are catered for too. These families have pushed the mining companies, and anyone else necessary, to ensure that fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, grandfathers and friends were rescued and brought back to the surface.
Today the courage, hope, self-belief, collective belief, unwavering determination and absolute refusal to give up of everyone involved has been rewarded.
Someone very close to me started their own personal journey ‘back to the surface’ today.
They’ve been trapped in their ‘mine’ for the last three years; over the last week a strategy has been put in place, and today was the day they stepped inside the health and fitness ‘rescue capsule’ and began to make their way back up.
I’m at the top in my own Camp Hope waiting for them 😀
If you feel the same, start making YOUR way to the top too; start NOW.
There are things you can do this instant that will get your journey underway – stop eating sweets and junk food, stop drinking alcohol or fizzy drinks (and yes, the sugar free versions are just as bad so lose those too).
Go for a walk, go and mess around with your kids in the park if you’ve got kids, just DO something that’s physical. The rest can follow after, the important thing is that you start making your way back up right now.

Training today…DEADLIFTS!
I love those things, I might not be saying that at the time – in fact, I don’t say that at the time, it’s more like, “FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!” – but of all the exercises I do, this ranks right up there among my favourites.
But these weren’t just ordinary deadlifts – I’m not a fan of ‘ordinary’ -these were WIDE GRIP deadlifts!
I learned my lesson from the last time I did these, and made sure I didn’t have any writing deadlines looming for at least two hours afterwards.
This time I knew that an innocent sounding leg routine made up of only three exercises was going to beat the living daylights out of my shoulders, lats and forearms; it did too, again!
It’s cardio Thursday tomorrow! How can it be Thursday already? That means there are only two more training days left and then that’s week three in the bag!
The next edition of the Six Pack Girl newsletter is going out tomorrow; if you don’t get it yet and would like to, simply download your free copy of ’10 Things You Absolutely Must Know’ and you’ll automatically be added to the list 😀
See you tomorrow!