Long Run Sunday

Today was weigh in day…however…I was not happy with what the scale said.  Either last week was a fluke or today was some sort water retention/needing to poop thing…because the scale showed I was up from last week.  I took some laxatives because (TMI in 3…2…1…) I actually haven’t pooped in a couple days and figured that would help a little.  Anyway, I’m going to weigh in again tomorrow morning after that’s had a chance to work AND today I ran 8.5 miles.  Oh, another thing that makes me not get too upset about the scale today is that 2 weeks ago, my waist was 35.5 and now it’s 33.  So, I *KNOW* I’ve lost inches and, frankly, that’s the more important numbers for me to pay attention to.  Also, I need to get to the gym and have one of the trainers do my body fat and see where I’m at there.  I mean, yea, I’ve got the widget on the left-hand side of my blog, but I want to have it done with calipers and be as actually accurate as possible (and then I’ll plug in the measurements to the widget and compare the two…if they’re super close, then I won’t bother with the caliper measurements and will just use the widget).

But, long story short, I may have to abandon my mini goal of hitting 172 by the end of February if the scale doesn’t show a loss tomorrow and still shows a gain, or maybe the same as last week’s weigh in.  Either way, tomorrow I will post my scale pic…no matter what it says.

The fact that I showed a slight gain from last week made me have urges…urges to just throw in the towel and call it a wash.  But I was able to keep the larger picture in the forefront of my mind and resisted the urge to binge (it would have been on the healthy food that’s in my house, but you can still have too much of a good thing).  Also, I reminded myself of the re-weigh in I want to do tomorrow morning…I don’t want to screw that up by bingeing today, do I?  No, I don’t.

So, I was going to sleep in until about 10am today because, well, it’s the first day of my weekend.  However, my body had other ideas and I was wide awake well before 8am.  Ugh.  I tried laying there and dozing for a bit, but that was utterly unsuccessful, so I just got up and started some coffee.  Last night I had done up my food selections for the next 7 days of my meal plans for the Shred Diet and had written a shopping list.  So, I went to the store and bought everything on my list and now my shelves, fridge and freezer are all fully stocked!  Woohoo!  I do need to adjust just one of my snacks for the week…I picked the 4 pot stickers snack on one day and when I went to buy the pot stickers from the sushi bar inside the grocery store, I noticed that they come in a pack of 8 and not 6 like I thought they did…so, I don’t want to throw away 4 of them, so I’m going to change one of my snacks elsewhere during the week so I can eat them a second time and not waste them.

I bet you’re wondering how my run went today.  Well, it went GREAT!  It was an awesome run.  I had a fast mile of 10:36 and a slow mile of 11:18, other than that all my miles were within 24 seconds of each other between the slowest and fastest of that group.  I hit an 11 min/mi average on the nose. 

kinda looks like a hoodie...hahaha

Nailed it!  On an 8.5 mile run, right now, I’m very happy with that pace.  I’m happy with it because I’m running by feel and not obsessing about my pace anymore.  Sure, I run about 45 seconds slower per mile on average, but I’m a happier runner than I was before when I was obsessed with my pacing.  I do, however, plan to buy a paceband to wear during my half marathons this year to attempt to pace out for a 2:37:30 half marathon.  My goal for this year with the half is to run one in 2:41 or less.  So…no port-a-potty stops this time…hahaha.  I am picking the 2:37:30 paceband because they have that one or a 2:45 one…I’d rather shoot for slightly faster than my half goal for the year than slower. 

Anyway, this company sells 5K, 10K, half marathon and full marathon pacebands in all different colors.  I wish they had a 15K paceband.  I’ll have to google that and see what I can find.  Maybe I’ll have to take the idea to someone that makes custom rubber bracelets and order them that way.  Of course, I wouldn’t be able to get just one most likely, which sucks.  But I can try, right?

Oh, back to my run today.  Since I was doing 8.5 miles and I like to wear my calf compression sleeves when I run anything 8.5 miles or longer, I was wearing my sleeves.  As I was running, I was mulling over the fact that I was wearing them and that this was my longest run since I started running again regularly...also this is my first run that I've worn them for since the RNR half in November!  I felt very proud of myself in that moment.  

So, my dinner tonight (per the Shred Diet) was a 4x2x1 inch serving of lasagna.  Oh my god…I just wanted to get a second serving!  Good thing the other two servings are frozen!  Oh and there’s the whole re-weigh in I’m doing tomorrow that I don’t want to screw up for myself to keep myself from thawing out of the servings in the freezer.  Hahaha.

Out of curiosity, with the whole showing a gain on the scale this morning thing still weighing on my mind, I decided to take my measurements and plug them into the widget I have on the left that is supposed to determine your body fat %.  When I first put it on there a couple weeks ago, my measurements through the widget determined I was 36% body fat.  Well, I just plugged them in and this is what I got:

that's what a 2.5 inch off your waist and about .5 off your hips will do