Happy Easter

Today’s run was 7 miles.  It wasn’t an easy miles, but it wasn’t super rough either.  I’m thinking it’s just due to the fact that I ran yesterday and I try not to run back to back days to avoid fatigue and overtraining.  For my longer runs (anything longer than 5.5 miles) I run a loop that includes an intersection with a traffic light.  About half the time I have to stop and wait for the light to change.  Today, the light changed to green when I was still about 50 feet from the intersection so I made the decision to sprint to the crosswalk so I wouldn’t have to stop and wait for it to change to green again.  YAY!  Nice little burst of speed.  During mile 4 I felt my second wind kick in, just like my last long run last Sunday (where it was actually my *fastest* mile…not the fastest this week, though…but that’s okay).  I’m going to call that my mile 4 groove.  It’s like the first 3 miles are just my warm up.  This gives me hope that I can definitely hit my goal of running 16 miles in one go by the end of this year and have no problem running a half marathon next February. 

So, HAPPY EASTER everyone!  Normally, during my runs, I see plenty of squirrels.  What I don’t see are bunnies.  Well, today I saw a bunny and while I ran down the trail, he hopped down the trail slightly ahead of me before taking his leave and squeezing under a fence.  

Oh!  The other thing…I log all my miles on in a pocket calendar and at the end of the month, I total up my miles.  For the month of March, I totaled 81.7 miles.  That’s 29.7 miles more than last month’s total.  Let’s see if I can hit at least 90 miles in April!

My 1st Event!

Yesterday was my first ever organized running event.  It was loads of fun! (when I get some pictures from the actual race from another racer, I'll post them.)  I completed the 3.3 miles in right at 32 minutes…pretty good time.  My average pace was 10:07 minutes/mile.  I’m even more excited about the 10K next Sunday now!  After that, I don’t really have any events planned, however I am looking at doing a duathlon option at a triathlon (Tri for Old Glory) in San Marcos, TX on July 7^th.  I’m thinking if I do it I’m going to shoot for the Olympic distance option.  That would be a 10K run with a 23.5 mile bike ride.  What I’ll do to train for it is to do a 7 mile run, then transition in my apartment to the bike and ride 26-27 miles on the bike.  If I can do that, then I can do the duathlon.  I’m sure I can do it.  It’s an $89 registration fee….woooo doggies!  But, I want to do it, so I think it’s worth it.  I should get a neat finisher’s medal too.  I hope.

Today I’ve got a 7 mile run planned.  I haven’t run back to back days since right after thanksgiving and I was still running short intervals of no more than 8 minutes each on the treadmill at that time.  I’m pretty sure I won’t have a problem with it because yesterday’s run was only just over 3 miles and today is a 7 miler.  Should be alright.

Okay, so the “slump” continues.  I ate waaaaaay too much yesterday.  You’ll also notice I didn’t weigh in yesterday like I usually do.  Tomorrow is the weigh in/remeasure day for the fitness challenge I’m doing with co-workers, so I just opted to wait until tomorrow to do my weigh in.  I’m sure I’m back up to at least 179, which is what I weighed in at for the last weigh in for the challenge.  Oh well.  I just hope I’m not over that mark.  I’d really hate to register a gain in the challenge.  But…if I do, I do and I just have to accept it and move forward.  I’m making a commitment now to do better in April than I did in March.  Over the next 2 months (between now and the next weigh in for the challenge), I want to see at least a 7 lb loss.  I think that is totally doable, so long as I stick to my plans and my routines.  I’m hoping I’ve got all this slump business out of my system and can quit eating things I don’t need to be eating.  Wish me luck!

Imperfectness is Still Success

It can't always be sunshine and pretty flowers on the journey to better fitness and weight loss.  Though I try, I am nowhere near perfect…never will be.  No matter what I do, I will always be flawed.  And I’m okay with that.  I’ve come to terms with my imperfectness.  So, I’m in a bit of a slump.  My eating hasn't been so great off and on over the past couple weeks.  I'm finding I'm feeling "vulnerable" when at work and am easily giving in to the group and ordering fried chicken with them, eating left over high sugar cake in the breakroom, eating loads of chips and salsa or frito's and bean dip.  Ugh.  I don't regret it, that's where you run into problems and make everything worse.  I just wish I wasn't having such a struggle with my willpower and self control right now.  I'll get over it and be just fine, I know I will.  It's just the time between now and then that's frustrating to me.

I’m a little torn with how I’ve been off and on “bad” the last few weeks.  On the one hand, I want to be an inspiration and role model for people around me that are trying to lose weight and/or gain better fitness and I don’t want to let them down by being imperfect or having stumbles.  But, on the other hand, I have to realize that my stumbles and imperfectness can also be inspiring because then people can see that it wasn’t easy for me, that I didn’t just decide to lose weight and then it magically happened.  I have to remember that the struggle is part of the process and it shouldn’t be glossed over or omitted.

So, with that being said…it’s been a rough couple of weeks.  One week, I worked a bunch of overtime and severely cut into my time to work out and didn’t work out for 4 days within one week.  Then, the next week, I was still apparently a little discouraged and didn’t do very good with my food choices.  I have to just accept that this has happened and strive to do better the next day.  One thing that my off and on “bad” food choices has taught me is that I’m great at maintaining a weight.  So long as I keep up my exercise, I can maintain like a champ.  And, from what I’ve heard, maintaining is way harder than losing the weight.

Another thing I have to keep in mind is that when I started this fitness challenge with some co-workers, I set out to achieve some certain goals.  One of those goals was to be able to fit comfortably in a size 10 jean.  Well, I do.  That was really my ultimate goal for the challenge as far as my weight loss went.  So, really, I’ve already achieved success as far as the goals I set out for myself.  Also, when I look at myself in the mirror, I can still see the jiggly stomach area and it gets me down a little bit.  However, when I go to a store and I’m walking through the front doors and I can see my reflection, I’m all like “damn I look GOOD!” 

I have to keep my successes in the front of my mind and push the negatives to the side and not let them control how I feel about myself.  I am a success.  I have succeeded.  And I will continue to do so.

A Little Comparison

Okay, wow, sorry, 3 posts in one day.  This is the last one for today, I promise!  So, today’s run was FANTASTIC!!  I felt great and strong and not tired even in the slightest.  My original plan was to run 7 miles, however at mile 4 I noticed my average pace was getting faster as opposed to the usual dropping off.  So, I thought, maybe I’ll run 8?  Then I was like, nooo, that’s silly, I don’t want to run 8, I’ll just run 7 like I planned.  Then, I got to mile 4.5 and was like, well…maybe I can run 7.5.  Yea, I’ll run 7.5.  Then, I was like, well, I can go to the turnaround for my 8 mile route and I can always stop when I get to mile 7.5 if I want to.  I fully gave myself permission to stop and walk any time after I reached the 7 mile mark.  Mile 7 came and went and I was still going strong.  I finished with my final time being over 7 minutes faster than the 8 miles I ran last Sunday.  What a difference!  That’s a HUGE difference!  I’m very happy with the end result of today’s run.  I felt like I could run forever today.  I really did.  In fact, I *briefly* toyed with the idea of doing 9 miles.  Yea, you read that right.  I decided against it for now though.  9 miles will come soon enough, but I’m not looking to make that bump in mileage before the middle of next month.  But I think my body’s ready for it and can handle it just fine.

This week:

Last week:

Last week’s mile times were as slow as 12 minutes per mile (don’t mind the last .76 mile, that was walking).  This week’s fastest was 9:45 and that wasn’t even my first mile, that was my FOURTH mile!!!  Told you I was feeling great on today’s run!